What boardgames did you just play?

Played Abyss last night. It's basically a set collection game, but there seemed to be fair bit of depth and different strategies to it. It also has some of the best looking art and peices I've seen in a board game.

And on top of that I had a couple of games of 7 Wonders, which is always good.

CivCube said:

Playing with five other people mitigates that. My group swarmed on the techs like locusts.

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Apparently, there is this awesome hella-cool damage splitter for the 4-damage weapon. I didn't even know this existed until my all fighters were taken out in a single blast.

I was trying to do a two-design fleet with fighters and dreadnoughts to cut down on the amount of tech I would have to buy to stay competitive. I have no clue whether or not this was a good strategy, even after contemplating the game for awhile.

PhroX said:

And on top of that I had a couple of games of 7 Wonders, which is always good.

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This is rapidly becoming one of my go-to games. I just got both expansions for it (Leaders and Cities), but I haven't played with them yet.



Haven't played the others, I don't think. I gotta get out more for board games.

I'm a fan of 7 Wonders myself, but I think it works best with three or four players. I like Cities as well, but perhaps Leaders is just a little bit too much.

Arakhor said:

I'm a fan of 7 Wonders myself, but I think it works best with three or four players. I like Cities as well, but perhaps Leaders is just a little bit too much.

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Yeah, Cities is a must have, but Leaders doesn't really seem to improve the game much from my experience. I don't mind playing with it, but I wouldn't bother buying it.

This was the first time I've played with the Wonders Pack, and the new abilties on them seemed pretty cool. I got Stonehenge (which, oddly enough, doesn't take stone to build....) on one of the games.

Haven't tried Babel yet, though I'm a little apprehensive about it. Certainly willing to give it a try though if one of the several people in my group who have this game pick it up...

Is Babel the new expansion? I'll have to look into that.

Arakhor said:

I'm a fan of 7 Wonders myself, but I think it works best with three or four players. I like Cities as well, but perhaps Leaders is just a little bit too much.

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I don't have enough experience with the expansions to comment on how they affect gameplay yet.

I feel the game really plays differently with 3 players than 4-5 because of the resource crunch (no extra brown/grey cards, so if your wonder needs four of a kind you better grab it quick) and the zero-sum nature of the military game (i.e. every player is affected by your military, not just your neighbors).

PhroX said:

Yeah, Cities is a must have, but Leaders doesn't really seem to improve the game much from my experience. I don't mind playing with it, but I wouldn't bother buying it.

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So Leaders gives you extra cards on the side you can buy, but the cards in Cities are included in the regular mix, right?

Some of these black cards look absolutely brutal.

One black card per player per era (similar to the purple guilds), yes, and yes they can be.

Tzolkin continues to be a bugbear for the brain. Ungh. I need to play this without alcohol lying around.

Survive! Escape From Atlantis - Boy, what a screw-you game this is. Not much else to say but it's fun. I wonder if it could work as a card game.

Once Upon A Time - Definitely more of a roleplaying game in card-game form. Lots of good opportunities to take the story in a different direction. Bonus points for the group if a coherent theme begins to form.

Had a couple of games of Suburbia recently, and I like it (maybe cos I won both times ). Suffers a bit from the usual issue of being relatively few way to interact with your opponents barring taking the pieces they might want, but I felt it had enough depth and variety to be worth playing.

Also played Black Fleet, which certainly doesn't lack for player interaction. Not really a "hardcore" boardgame, but definitely a fun one. Lovely pieces too.

I played six hours of Relic (with Nemesis and the new Halls of Terra) yesterday and today, with my flatmate and a friend. It was good fun.

I recently got Evolution.

It's a deceptively simple board/card game - easy to set up, not very complicated, but much like Race for the Galaxy it is wonderfully balanced, using the randomness of the card draw and food availability to create ever changing situations that require adaptive strategies.

We had games where carnivores ruled supreme and caused all surviving species to grow in size to protect themselves against the menace. Another time we had a tiny species that relied on its numbers and horn defence to bring down the carnivor (horns reduced the pop each time the carnivor attacked and the carnivor HAD to attack until he was fed, effectively killing off most of its population). We had one game with an abundance of food where all species could grow and multiple and still got fed, making good use of traits like fertility. Then we had one where food was always scarce and some species used stuff like Long Neck or Intelligence to survive, while others relied on Fat Tissue and Foraging to snatch as much food as possible and starve others.

It's really great to see how dynamic the whole game behaves and how it doesn't have an obvious first-order strategy. If you are interested in a simple, but very strategic board/card game, I'd highly recommend this one!

That does sound interesting.

In that case you might want to have a look at the Dice Tower review here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frL8oX8uYZU

Funemployed makes Cards Against Humanity and Apples To Apples look like, well, Apples To Apples. It's the same mechanic of round-player-picks-the-best-one; in this case, you have to use your whole hand like a resume of traits and explain why you're the best one for the job. Most traits sound very useless, so... You haven't live until you've heard why someone needs to use fairy dust to be a gym teacher, and do so convincingly and with wit.

I've been the last 2 days to Spiel, the worlds biggest fair for board games. While the games I've played where not tremendously interesting (okay, not bad, but nothing outstanding; best ones, in case someone cares: Dice City, Bastion and Favors of the Pharao, all have some replay value), the more interesting part was that they apparently are re-printing the Avalong Hill Civilization boardgame, now called Mega Civilization https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/184424/mega-civilization .
I saw some guys playing there, but not sure how that worked out for them, given that the big board said something like 5-18 players and 12h+ playtime.
The package is huge, apparenly weighs 10 kg, and the guy at the stand said it'd cost 180€.
I didn't buy it, but given that I only hear good things about it...maybe wait for a half year. Not sure why the price is so high (okay, boardgamegeek says it's 2000+ pieces), but I guess it might drop a bit.

You've been in Essen, J? Cool. I can only imagine the towers of worker placement games...

Last night I played some Coup and Avalon, which always go over well. I also played Zombicide and Munchkin. I gotta tell ya, I'm not too impressed by geek culture games anymore. You can usually tell what they are from the aggressive "promo" mini-expansions that outnumber a village, the derivative characters that range from uninspired to outright rip-off, and the tired movement rules that extend the play time well beyond its welcome. Zombicide is certainly no exception, although it seems to be adopting a TV-season-like approach with its expansions. I'd rather play Pandemic: Legacy.

And Munchkin. It's an almost-game. There is a mechanic, believe it or not. I haven't played Fluxx, but I imagine it's not too different from this. The thing is, if everyone's playing to win, then the game will never end until the right combination of cards comes up. Before then, you're subjected to endless D&D jokes that weren't that funny the first time. We were playing the Axe Cop version, which, eh, at least highlighted how random everything is.

I had a surprisingly fun experience with Citadel.
I had played it once without it making much of an impression, but 3-player version seemed to offer quicker play and more strategies overall.

Haven't posted here much, but there are some updates.

I've recently acquired Suburbia and played several rounds of it with family and friends, and I'm an instant convert to the board game version of SimCity aka NIMBY: The Game. The initial group-think was that buying residential stuff was setting yourself up for failure because you would fall back on your income and reputation tracks if you expanded too quickly. But tiles like the Homeowners' Association are really powerful late-game, especially if you buy the Schools to boost the population of all your green tiles. We have found the ultimate winner of the game is often the dude who wins the most goals as opposed to the most population through regular gameplay, so long as that person doesn't totally tank their population.

Also, I've played 4 rounds of 7 Wonders w/ Leaders. My thoughts: I like the extra mechanics, although I'm still developing strategies to go along with the leaders I have in my hand. Mannekin Pis is more powerful than in the base game because you can easily afford those expensive leaders. I only played A-side Roma but I want to play B-side next to really utilize the leaders in the game. However, I'm concerned I won't have enough cash. I also enjoyed playing Ephesos B-side because it gave a bunch of extra cash, so I wasn't concerned with buying leaders (also, I hired Bilkis either first or second turn so I could pay 1 coin to the bank to cover any resource shortfall).

True to form, the Game of Thrones LCG's second edition sorta snuck around and surprised me. At first I was bemoaning the emphasis on one-of cards, of which that I would have to buy a couple more sets. Turns out I needn't have worried; the game is that good, especially with three or more players. Being able to use characters for more than one kind of challenge against other players means that every round is very tactically granular and dependent on immediate circumstances. So of course the plot cards define the rounds in terms of board state and economy, with cards like "Wildfire Assault" killing off all but three of your active characters for each player. And then the title cards influence how you can or can't attack others, along with round-specific powers.

Despite having only one core set, I never felt like I was underpowered. One co-player was playing with all three cores, and we still ended up with near three-way tie by the time the store closed. The round structures are punishing enough that seeming runaway cards like Tywin Lannister, whose high Strength score can be boosted by gold count (!), are easily dispensed with after too long. It leads to rounds and phases that add up to highly memorable, interesting situations.

I've played several games of Machi Koro recently. Very much a casual game, being pretty luck driven, yet I find myself thoroughly enjoying it.