The Big Thread of Board Games

[Gandalf]

That's what I've heard too.

It appears Die Macher is going down the priority list.

[wautd]

Finally got my copy of Belfort on the table, which is a hybrid between worker placement/area control kind of game. My only beef was the pretty long downtime (although that may vary on the player group), but it looks and plays great. Nicely written rules too.

Keythedral is an oldie that I was pleasantly surprised about. Reminded me a bit of Catan (collect recources, build stuff for points) but without dice and perfectly playable with 2.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Played Settlers of Catan for the first time yesterday. Highly enjoyable! Also tried out a 6+ player card game called The Resistance. Very easy to grasp and great fun, it's a good warm up for other games as it's quick. It's great for encouraging paranoia and deduction.

[xt828]

My gaming group has just gotten into Cosmic Encounter recently, which has been extremely enjoyable, and I would thoroughly recommend it. 7 players with the expansions we have, and the battle and negotiation mechanics can make for some very interesting interaction.

[Dave]

Played Settlers of Catan for the first time yesterday. Highly enjoyable! Also tried out a 6+ player card game called The Resistance. Very easy to grasp and great fun, it's a good warm up for other games as it's quick. It's great for encouraging paranoia and deduction.

Gah, the gaming event I've been going to almost always devolves into The Resistance eventually. One guy just loves it and cracks it out when all the other games wind down. I mean, it's fun for a couple rounds but playing for hours on end gets a little old.

To be sure, it's a good game. The same guy broke out a slightly better medieval variant called "The Resistance: Avalon", which adds a few new characters that have different powers, which allow you to mix and match to change the balance of power in the game.

[madd0ct0r]

Did I mention 'Escape from atlantis'? http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2403 ... m-atlantis

fun, albiet a little random. Of the 48 atlanteans to rescue, 40 were eaten/drowned, with spite being the main motivational factor. A fun game for dicking about for 20min between two heavier games, not least because once you've lost you can still keep playing to screw up the other players.

[Crazedwraith]

I've got that one. Mainstay of our christmas games, along with 'Go For broke; It's pretty fun, though when I play with my family we're most too nice to attack each other's peices.

[Gerald Tarrant]

I've recently run into four games that I thought were worth mentioning.

Six: The best brief explanation is Hexagonal Connect 4. It's as the name suggest connect 6, but instead of just a line, Pyramids, and a circle are acceptable shapes. It has some of the feeling of hive, in that once all your pieces are down you're allowed to start moving your hexagonal pieces around. The advanced game allows you to break the "Hive" with the smaller of the two clumps of tiles being returned to their owners hands. It's a fascinating two player game, I'm not sure how well it holds over long play times, and varying player skill. But I had fun. Also there's an amusing 4 player variant where both teams have partners that they aren't allowed to communicate with. It's apparently an old game (2003 publishing date) but a smaller game publishing outfit (FoxMind) just picked it up and started publishing it again.

FoxMind also published another fun little game. String Railways. The playing board is a shoestring loop, players place tiles of cities and stops and drop their shoestrings to connect them, there are varying penalties and bonuses for crossing other players' strings, hitting other players' stops, and things like that. It's a light little filler game, and the game play is more about geometry than normal boardgame optimization techniques.

Octi: It's creative, I'm not sure about how much I'll replay it, but it certainly got me thinking. The pieces are disks with 8 upgrade slots; and resin arrows. The arrows fit into the upgrade slots, and allow the disks to move or jump in the direction the resin arrows are pointing. Jumping an opponents piece captures all the arrows they put down on that piece. What's fun is that like a checkers piece you can jump as many pieces as you want, that are in the direction of the arrows you've put down. I'm not sure how much replay value this game has, while the concepts are interesting, there's a bit too much of checkers in it for me to do more than dabble in it.

Clash of Cultures. It's a turn based Civilization building game. You get 3 actions per turn (and 3 turns per age), that can be spent building units, collecting resources, researching, or moving or building cities. It's also a set round game, so while in a lot of games like this its tempting to try to research everything, you just don't have time here. Like a lot of good civ building games there's multiple paths to victory, and they all feel like they've got a good chance of winning, and of course there are tech choices that will help every strategy. Play time with 4 was about 2 1/2 hours, although the guys who taught me took 3 1/2 the first time they played. Unfortunately it only goes to 4; it's also kind of pricey, I saw $90 quoted as the retail price (my flgs sells them at a nice discount though). I've always been a fan of the multiple path to victory board game, and this fits meets that requirement quite well. It also didn't seem like there were any particularly overpowered tech options, which was another plus. It's interesting engaging, and pretty easy to learn. On the whole it's one I'm planning on picking up.

[wautd]

Finally got to play Galaxy Trucker. Funny concept; just puzzle a ship with junkpieces together and hope it'll be good enough to earn the most points if you survive the hazards of space

[Eternal_Freedom]

Played Settlers of Catan for the first time yesterday. Highly enjoyable! Also tried out a 6+ player card game called The Resistance. Very easy to grasp and great fun, it's a good warm up for other games as it's quick. It's great for encouraging paranoia and deduction.

Gah, the gaming event I've been going to almost always devolves into The Resistance eventually. One guy just loves it and cracks it out when all the other games wind down. I mean, it's fun for a couple rounds but playing for hours on end gets a little old.

To be sure, it's a good game. The same guy broke out a slightly better medieval variant called "The Resistance: Avalon", which adds a few new characters that have different powers, which allow you to mix and match to change the balance of power in the game.

This is exactly what we found, so we use it as a warm-up, alternating betwen that and Munchkin.

[Zinegata]

Finally got to play Galaxy Trucker. Funny concept; just puzzle a ship with junkpieces together and hope it'll be good enough to earn the most points if you survive the hazards of space

I prefer it with the expansion after a few plays. With the expansion, the question becomes not who earns the most points, but who managed to complete a single run at all.

[wautd]

Got to play Terra Mystica today. Bit hard to explain because there are few games to compare it with, but in short you're one of 14 unique races that start with a few settlements. Objective is to expand your settlements/income/religion to score them points. A rather complex game but not too difficult to play. It was hyped a lot in 2012 and I understand why.

[Ace Pace]

Played a decent game of Descent: The Second Edition. This game pretty much crucially relies on having a good DM but it's a very fun and quick game. We did 3 rounds over 5 hours and it was a pretty solid game.

Mechanics took me about 10 minutes to grasp, and that was that.

[weemadando]

I've picked up a copy of Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Treachery and love the rules (view them here). Hoping to get a game in at the next get together, but the way it reads, it sounds like a mechanically simple, but socially complex game.

Also, the design and production is fantastic, especially for a game that was only $50 (AUD). The rulebook is stuffed full of play examples and the moulded plastic insert in the box is the best designed counter/card/dice holder I've encountered.

[Zinegata]

Got to play Terra Mystika; and it's indeed quite good. I liked how the giant smashed everything into ruined terrain .

[wautd]

We played Eclipse with the Rise of the Ancients expansion last night. It adds a lot of neat things* and really open ups the game (what with the cloaking and wormholes and all). The unique, rare techs and developments are nice enough to set as a goals and grab it before anyone else does. I also liked the ability to make an official alliance now, so you can fly trough your allies space and combine forces during combat (which was still futile against my fleet of souped-up cruisers on ancient steroids ). The 4 new races are really nice as well. I had to play as the Pirate faction, where you earn money for doing battle, and where you get the best money to resource conversion rate in the game. Very fun to play with.

Oh yeah, a lot of things to counter missiles although somehow we rarely have missiles in our games so I can't comment on their OP-ness

[Zinegata]

Torps were OP in the original because of the zero power requirement. This means all you really need is the missle tech and you have a combat-ready fleet. Everyone else needs a poweplant and a better gun.

[wautd]

Some new games I've tried recently:

Le Havre turned out to be an exellent 2 player game (up to 5 is possible but I think it will take too long/becomes too chaotic with more than 3 players). In the same gist as Agricola you're building up your farm harbor and economy and get past to each nasty pay day (food). You can either buy or build buildings which help you to convert raw materials into finished goods, which in turn give you more money and food, or ships which give you free food and allows you to sell stuff. It might sound complex but it's not that difficult to learn because the complexity only gradually increases.

Reef Encounter was a rather abstract but tactical tile laying/action based game with an original theme. Real brain burner so it might not be for everyone but worth a try.

Lancaster was an awesome worker placement game because it has so much going on, yet relatively easy to learn. In most worker placement games, you can block locations by placing your workers there first. However, in this games, your workers are knight with various strenghts, and higher strenght knights will be able to push out weaker knights. In other words, will you want more knights (so you can do more actions) or fewer but stronger knights (so you can do those actions you really want. There's also option to expand your castle (giving you more income) or noble track (giving you more end game points and voting power, which comes in handy during the voting session to bring up/keep certain laws, which can help you greatly). Finally you can send troops to France to score points (mayority system because usually you need help from the other players as well to get to the minimum attack value. If not, your knights get stuck another round or cost money/desert). Deep gameplay, yet easy to learn and doesn't even take too long to play.

Now studying the rules for Stronghold which looks to be an interesting 2 player game to say the least.

[Zinegata]

I've played all of those save Reef Encounter. Le Havre is very enjoyable, but the downtime is definitely killer when more than 3 players. I got a copy of Lancaster based on the strength of the first play, but if you like a more historical version try out GMT's Crown of Roses.

Stronghold is... not very balanced. Very hard for the attacker to win with semi-competent defensive play.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Now studying the rules for Stronghold which looks to be an interesting 2 player game to soay the least.

I've played all of those save Reef Encounter. Le Havre is very enjoyable, but the downtime is definitely killer when more than 3 players. I got a copy of Lancaster based on the strength of the first play, but if you like a more historical version try out GMT's Crown of Roses.

Stronghold is... not very balanced. Very hard for the attacker to win with semi-competent defensive play.

Have you tried it 4-player? Most of the sessions I've done were 4, and they always seemed to come down to a point or two at most. I'll agree that there are some attacker set-ups (from among the strategy card draws) which are pretty awful, personally I think an attacking team without either the Saboteur or the flame spell is going to have an uphill battle.

I liked A Few Acres of Snow. It's a two player Deck building game. The sides are Britain and France, and they're fighting over Canada/Quebec and New England. It's a victory point game that ends either when the French capital is taken, or a certain number English victory point cities are taken. One of the innovations that I liked is the Siege mechanic. You'll play military cards into a siege deck, and if your power in the siege is ever two points or higher than your opponents you win, and claim the city or repulse the invaders, and all the military cards return to their players draw deck. What's fascinating (and I wish I'd explored this mechanic a bit more) is that sometimes it's in both players interests to leave a siege unresolved so all those cards will stay out of the deck. If you put too much into your military your deck can become quite clogged.

A general question, I've always liked Grand Strategy type games, but I usually find myself wishing for a little more out of the battle-systems. For example in Axis and Allies the only tactical choice you have is loss order of your units, and in a House Divided your only real choice is which units you'll target. My game group occasionally busts out flames of war and will play several thousand point battles on both sides. One time as a curiosity we tried to adapt it into a campaign/strategy style system. We'd have platoons representing divisions and we were fighting the Battle of the Bulge. The strategy map was just a bunch of city nodes connected by roads. The defeated armies would retreat down any road the opponent hadn't come from into a friendly city, and the Victor would occupy the city. This changed both our strategic and tactical play. Quite often in our tabletop games there's a tendency to take the small remnants of our forces and throw them at the scoring objective hoping to hold for one more turn. And our strategic games tend to have a lot of sacrificial units thrown out, just to buy a round (whether safe from blitzes or something else). What our combined strategy/tactics game did, is make us re-evaluate some of those decisions that are unrealistic, and play with more "real world" minded concerns. We didn't make attacks that would cost us 90% of our forces while only killing a fraction of the enemy, just to grab a scoring point. We didn't leave blocking forces in place unless they were necessary, because the tactical situation was usually so unfavorable as to be worthless (as opposed to Axis and Allies for instance, where a lone defender always has a chance to score a kill) In the case of our Strategy/Tactics system the lone defending platoon would usually end up having Tanks move to Machine Gun range, and then shelled and Machine Gunned to death, without any chance of afflicting attrition. What I'm really sort of rambling towards, is the question are there any good systems out there that combine the strategic and tactical? Like say for instance Star Fleet Battles in an Federation-Empire style Grand Strategy arena.

[Zinegata]

Re: Stronghold

Nah, we only played it two-player and the defender always won.

Re: Few Acres of Snow

It's interesting but unfortunately there are also broken plays in that game - see the Halifax Hammer.

Re: Tactical + Strategic layer

There aren't a lot of games that even cater to both, as it generally makes the game last for several weeks. Federation-Empire for instance is really meant to be played over several months.

The thing about the strategic and tactical layer is that barring extreme incompetence, tactical wins should very rarely affect the strategic picture. Most tactical battles IRL were decided well before first contact, based on the amount of troops and supplies each side was able to deploy in a sector. Even the idea that both sides could come up with an equal number of troops in a sector - resulting in a cherished "fair" fight - does not actually work because fair fights tend to end in mutual annihilation as opposed to one side demolishing the other.

I for one tend to be ok with Strategic-layer games that nonetheless manage to have representation for various nuances in combat. In Fire in the Sky for instance a naval battle consists of several intelocking phases:

1) A submarine attack phase, wherein submarines from both sides could be committed to attempt to sink enemy fleet units (assuming they aren't driven off)

2) An air combat phase to determine how much air power is available for bombing missions

3) A bombing phase wherein aircraft get to try and destroy ships

4) A surface combat phase wherein surviving surface combat elements shoot each other

5) An amphib landing phase, wherein any surviving transports gets to land troops, which then fights enemy troops with both sides using any leftover support (naval gunfire or airpower) to improve their chances.

Which interestingly is able to mirror a lot of the actual battles of the Pacific War. You'll get Midway and Coral Sea type battles, some surface-only fights ala Guadalcanal, and some really complicated setups where people are playing for all the marbles.

[wautd]

Re: Few Acres of Snow

It's interesting but unfortunately there are also broken plays in that game - see the Halifax Hammer.

I havn't played it yet but the second edition has some modified rules and cards which should have made it more balanced (dunno if this has any influence of this Halifax Hammer or whatever it is).

[weemadando]

Spartacus is a damn good game - had a few games with Stofsk, Spyder and RL folks. 3-4 players (soon to be released expansion will increase this to 3-6) each of whom play as a noble house. The game encourages a lot of wheeling and dealing between players as certain cards will only be able to played with the assistance of one or more players to meet the pre-requisites. But you'll also be cutting deals to sell assets (slaves, gladiators, equipment) as well as to try and curry favour - after all, there's no point having an amazing Gladiator if no one is going to invite you to compete at the games. The actual arena phase is fast and fun. There's a degree of strategy that we're still trying to figure out, but while you can have closely fought and intense matches, you can also have ones where a slave gets fed to a gladiator to buff their rep (and value).

The game plays very quickly, our first game (using the "short" game rules - which is really just starting further along the score track) came in at under an hour and the second (using longer, but not full length) was 2 hours.

It's a really striking game - especially for a debut release by a company (even if they have Flames of War in their backpocket). I really can't wait for the expansion which is going to add more players (desperately needed) and also add some intriguing new mechanics (can hyave team battles in the Arena).

[Zinegata]

Re: Few Acres of Snow

It's interesting but unfortunately there are also broken plays in that game - see the Halifax Hammer.

I havn't played it yet but the second edition has some modified rules and cards which should have made it more balanced (dunno if this has any influence of this Halifax Hammer or whatever it is).

2nd Ed does have the fix I think, but basically in the 1st Ed there was a strategy that made it all but impossible for France to win. (centered around the strategic use of Halifax - hence the "Halifax Hammer" terminology).

Martin Wallace simply doesn't playtest his games enough, which is why a lot of these broken plays get past the testing phase.

====

Spartacus I've also heard very good things about. There was a precursor game to it whose name escapes me at the moment, but it's similar in that you're managing a Ludus wherein you get a stable of gladiators and their support staff, and then compete for glory by organizing games and having your gladiators fight in the said games.

In Spartacus though, you can send in some poor slave girl to be beheaded by Spartacus to the cheers of the crowd. The precursor game is much more historically themed - not only are you not allowed to simply send in untrained target practice, but you need to properly pair up gladiators depending on historical allowed matchups. If your gladiator was a Myrmilio (SP?) for instance, he can only be paired against a very specific type of opponent. Much more historical with all the fun of betting and killing, but not quite the same theatrics as Spartacus.

[wautd]

Two other games I recently played which are excellent 2-player games:

Tournay is a card game where each player needs to build a district of buildings and characters or combat events. Like Ora et Labora, you can also use your opponent's meeples (for a small fee) to use his buildings or draft better cards in your hand. Same artwork style as Troyes, so you'll either love it or hate it (I like it, it has a certain charm to it).

Le Havre: The Inland Port is a light, 2 player version of Le Havre (in the same gist as the excellent Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small). The neat spinning wheel mechanism from Ora et Labora is back and you can still use your opponents buildings like in Le Havre. It also brings some interesting ideas of its own (like the mandatory selling of your buildings when it's not used or the way the wharehouse works). The game looks quite dry and is a bit too expensive for its components, but if you like a short but meaty 2-player game, this is worth a try.