Board Games!

[hasdgfas]

I've played a few new/ish things over the past few days:

Galaxy Defenders:

This was a neat co-op game where you essentially play as an XCOM unit trying to complete a mission of some sort before everyone dies to aliens. There were a lot of fiddly bits with it (which isn't necessarily a problem) and it felt a little clunky overall, but I still had a lot of fun. Would play again and would recommend(although I don't think I could play more than a mission in a row), would not buy.

Splendor:

This is ok. It feels like too many components for too short a gametime. Mechanics were good, it just felt like it wanted a bit more to it. Would play again, undecided on recommendation, would not buy.

Sheriff of Nottingham:

I really enjoyed this. It took me too long to feel like I had a decent strategy at all, but by the last couple rounds, I felt like I understood the whole picture a bit more, and knew I was going to get last by a significant amount thanks to a couple really bad bluffs that really hurt. Would definitely play again, would definitely recommend, would consider buying.

Finally, I played more

Coup:

After playing it with a bit better of an explanation and in a bit less "light" of a situation, I enjoyed this a bit more. I still have some big problems with the game. Similar to Splendor, I think that it wants to be a bit bigger, because it feels like it ends too early. However, I would play it again. I still would not recommend it, as I think there are better filler games and better games which want to be a bit longer than filler. Definitely not buying it.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

So I played a new game yesterday!

Tragedy Looper

: If you've seen Higurashi or Mirai Nikki or Stein's Gate or any story with time travel and murder, that is this game. The object is that in each scenario (there are 10 in the book and more online) there is one played who plays the Mastermind, and the other 1 to 3 players take control of the 3 protagonists who are trying stop a "terrible event". The game involves managing the paranoia levels of the main characters in the plot, while also creating good will with the characters to use their special abilities (some of which remove paranoia, or do other interesting things.) The mastermind has full access to all the information in the game. They know what all the roles of the players are, and what outcomes will lead to "bad ends" that will lose the game for the protagonist teams.

The game is played in a series of "loops". Each loop has a certain allotment days before the tragedy ends, and on certain days, the protagonists know that certain events are meant to happen (Whether that be a murder, a suicide, a bomb exploding, a poisoning at the hospital etc.) To win the game, the protagonists must survive a whole loop, without meeting any of the "bad end" conditions that lose them the game, or dying themselves. (there are characters and things that involve the protagonists dying, which ends the loop). The mastermind wins if he can trigger game losses for the protagonists in ALL the loops, and the protagonists don't know all the pieces of the puzzle (i.e What each character's role in the tragedy is, be in serial killer, key person, loved one etc.)

The game can be played as a bare bones mechanical game, and ignore the little bits of flavour, but the game is full of it. Every protagonist has a different tool for going back in time (one has an app on their phone, another has a magical diary). It doesn't make a functional game play difference, but it does allow you to imagine the protagonists as different people with unique personalities. Same for the characters on the board. There are only so many possible characters (though there is enough variance that the faces on the board do not get stale), so you will see certain characters as a potential killer one game, and then maybe as a really useful and helpful person the next. Each case really does capture the feeling of different time streams and events turning people into different kinds. Given the mastermind has all the information, the game instructs him not to give away anything when he tells the players that the loop ends, but once a case is over, for one side or another, it's always fun to reveal the story that was written with it (that only the mastermind can see.)

All in all, a really fun deductive reasoning game. I recommend it to everyone on this site, because I think mafia players would enjoy this quite a bit.

[Nexus]

Man, loads of people have been recommending that. Definitely one I wouldn't mind trying at least once.

Had a fun 3 player game of Smallworld the other day - I ended up getting so many broken combinations (Commando Ghouls and Seafaring Tritons) so easily roflstomped, but it was a lot of fun.

Had a less fun game of Sentinels - ended up being far too difficult and there was no fun in it at all. Was quite sad about that...

[quadz08]

SEAFARING TRITONS

good lord that sounds broke as fuck

[xRECKONERx]

I SUPER DUPER WISH Dead of Winter was in stock anywhere.

[xRECKONERx]

anyone happen to be around for some potential Vassel games? I'm bored

[Chevre]

Suburbia

is $27 plus shipping (I think it varies on location, was $8 for me) at Miniature Market. It's $45 (which qualifies for free shipping) on Amazon.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

anyone happen to be around for some potential Vassel games? I'm bored

I'm always up for BSG or Betrayal or anything like that.

[Faraday]

I SUPER DUPER WISH Dead of Winter was in stock anywhere.

Ya agreed

[BBmolla]

Faraday is Coup expansion any good?

[Sudo_Nym]

So I just got back from a gaming vacation, and had a bunch of fun.

Tokkaido:

A new favorite. I really enjoy the design, and it's much improved by having more players instead of the two I normally play with.

Puerto Rico:

An older game, but I've almost never played it. It's fantastic, but I really need more experience with it.

Revolution:

The kind of game I love in concept, but hate actually playing. Bidding games like this one tend to have a snowball effect that I hate, where people who are winning are hard to dislodge, and I find that annoying.

Age of Gods:

Fun but chaotic. The hidden races mechanic is really nice, and allows some sweet plays, but the game is a war game heavily skewed in favor of the attackers, and makes planning out a defense almost impossible.

Kingdom Builder:

I love this game. It's a simple builder with surprising strategic depth, and I have never not had fun playing it.

[Faraday]

Faraday is Coup expansion any good?

not played it. er i wasn't rly interested in it, i liked the simplicity of the base game well enough

[Patrick]

I'd be up for BSG at some point. Maybe at the weekend if some people are free

[Nexus]

i'd like to do some bsg

[Thesp]

I've been meaning to reply here for a bit, because I feel a compulsive need to post on everything board games...

Speaking of Civ-like games (which you guys were two months ago) I got to play

Machi Koro

the other night. Very fun, quite fast, pretty self-explanatory. Pitched at kids but the adults (who were all bigtime Civ veterans) enjoyed the hell out of it too. Once we knew what we were doing, it was probably a 20m game. Good icebreaker/intergenerational game.

Got

Tales of the Arabian Nights

for my birthday last month. We've now played twice... it's pretty enjoyable, but

good gods does it take forever

for a relatively simple game. 2400+ 'stories' in the book, each one with multiple options that vary based on your skills or treasures or statuses... this thing REALLY wants to be a video game. Without all the number crunching and page flipping, it would probably take an hour. As it stands, a 3p game took us about 2 1/2 hours (while learning it) and a 5p game took almost 3 1/2 hours. Doesn't scale well. Only other real complaint is that the player tokens are much too large for the board, obscuring your travel routes/city name/etc.

Glad you enjoyed

Machi Koro

! It really needs an expansion (and is getting one), and I enjoy it as well. Sorry to hear

Tales of the Arabian Nights

went so long - I tend not to play it with more than 3 because it can indeed go so obscenely long. (What Fenchurch says, basically.) If you enjoy that style of game,

Agents of Smersh

is the same, but co-op, and with a tongue-in-cheek James Bond spy theme to it.

Cousin decided to host a game night for Christmas. Had a little trepidation, since most games in this family are Monopoly, but I brought over my stash, got them hooked on Catan. Should be a good start on classing up the joint.

HECK YEAH!

Need to try Galaxy Trucker, but I've heard nothing but marvelous things.

I'm not a

Galaxy Trucker

fan, but I appreciate it, but I love it on iPad.

Suburubia:

Ho. Lee. Fuck. This game. This fucking game. First off, WOW it takes way longer to complete than I originally thought it would. It took us about 2.5 hours to play, with a quick 5 minute smoke break in the middle. But that first playthrough was like constant revelation after revelation. I can see how deeply strategic this game is... and the way it takes the drafting mechanic from Smallworld and re-appropriates it here is absolutely beautiful. What a gorgeous game, by the way... it's so well designed. It's a game where the theme/flavor is equally as strong as the mechanics, and I fucking LOVED it. While waiting for my turn, I'd just read through the different tiles and chuckle at how clever some of the flavor -> mechanics translations were. The last round, when we were in the C tiles, everyone was jittery and nervous, waiting for that 1 More Turn tile to flip. And when it did... man, everyone went into a panic on the last turn. And man, the reveal of the secret goals at the end was fucking great! I sort of wish you had more than one secret goal to go for, a la Keyflower, because only having the one feels a little bit like... the game is decided before final scoring. But this was great, and the mechanics were great, and while it took a little bit too long (compared to Keyflower, which takes like an hour tops) I think part of that might've been us not knowing the tiles and having to read them all over and over again.

Oh yeah and the speedbump mechanic... holy shit, that is GENIUS! Not only does it stop games from becoming snowball runaway victories, but it forces an interesting balancing mechanic in your strategies. I accidentally (seriously, without trying) kept getting reputation gains in the early game, so eventually my reputation was at +6 while everyone else had +1 or 0, which meant I was hitting tons of speedbumps. Eventually I had to buy a tile and place it STRATEGICALLY for the negative effect to bump down my reputation so I could build up a little bit of income.

Just... what a brilliant fucking game.

I totally agree with you on Suburbia as being awesome, but 2.5 hours to play? Wow! That will

definitely

cut down in future plays. (Our 2 player games take 30-40 minutes, and 4 players takes around an hour.) After you start to feel like you know all the tiles, then it's worth throwing the expansion in, but it's not critical to do so until then. (I have and love the expansion.)

It's also worth looking at

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

by the same designer if you like Suburbia.

So I played a new game yesterday!

Tragedy Looper

: ...

All in all, a really fun deductive reasoning game. I recommend it to everyone on this site, because I think mafia players would enjoy this quite a bit.

I totally agree, though I strongly, strongly recommend being taught the game by someone who has played before. It's probably well suited to PBF.

Tokkaido:

A new favorite. I really enjoy the design, and it's much improved by having more players instead of the two I normally play with.

Puerto Rico:

An older game, but I've almost never played it. It's fantastic, but I really need more experience with it.

Glad you enjoyed both!

Tokaido

is nice, light, and lovely.

Puerto Rico

is one of the best Euros ever made, and gets even better over more plays.

Faraday is Coup expansion any good?

not played it. er i wasn't rly interested in it, i liked the simplicity of the base game well enough

Having played the expansion, I agree with you.

---

Kristen and I are again doing a 10x10 boardgame challenge, where we are committing to playing 10 games 10 times each in the next year. You can follow the progress here:

Robin & Kristen's 2015 10x10 Challenge

/shameless plug

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Faraday is Coup expansion any good?

not played it. er i wasn't rly interested in it, i liked the simplicity of the base game well enough

Keith and I own it. Once I get a shot to try it out with a good group, I'll make a post.

[Natirasha]

I played Tokaido a week or so ago and I agree it was pretty sweet.

[hasdgfas]

I just played Tokaido today for the first time. It's very elegant and very clean. I really enjoyed it, although I missed a few things the first time through.

[Faraday]

Finally got

Imperial Settlers

out. Loved it. Played with my brother - who seemed a little overwhelmed at first (he's used to lighter style games) but quickly got the hang of it. The iconography is pretty clear, and there's not much. The factions felt very different. It does seem a bit luck dependant - in that it depends on what you draw, but most card games have that and there are ways to draw more cards fairly easily. Really, really liked it. Also there's a decent amount of interaction, the barbarians in particular are fairly attack focused. Need to try the different factions.


I thought Tokaido was okay. I've only played it twice or three times, and it was fun, and surprisingly "haha took your spot" given the theme, but I feel like it'd have limited enough replayability.

[Sudo_Nym]

So how bout some BSG on Saturday?

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I'm in.

[Porochaz]

I could probably do Saturday

[Sudo_Nym]

So it turns out that my vacation game of Kingdom Builder is online now, if anybody's interested in stop-motion gameplay (I'm blue, petroleumjelly is white, the other two are non-scummers):

[Nexus]

cdb and i would be up for bsg in the afternoon

[Nexus]

since patrick fails.

2.30pm GMT - how does that grab people? It's best for us UK folks, is all.