What boardgames did you just play?

Yesterday me and my dad and his friend played dominos and I won

More Coup and The Resistance to be had last week. These two are gaining serious steam in my group since they're so quick to play.

Belfort is a decent Agricola-like that also implements some area control. The open-ended actions phase where you can take as many actions as you want on your turn is a breath of fresh air. That same breath can prove to be suffocating--you can squander your chances by doing too much at once. I'd be up for playing again. The only complaint I have is that it's too easy to get more workers and not worry about upkeep. Scratch that, it's also too short. I can get needing to optimize fast in a game like this, but having only six rounds means it can feel like the game is over before it really starts.

I know what you mean. I'd be quite happy if Sylla had an extra round or two, rather than the fixed limit of five.

Archipelago - This game is hella fun because of all the elements providing checks and balances against each other. It's also not so much fun to teach because every rule has you going, "Okay, and this is also related. But we'll get to that later..." Once everyone in the group understands the rules, though, I think this game will be firing on all cylinders. It's just an experience every time I dive in.

I just bought the Cities and Leaders expansions to 7 Wonders. I think they should go down well.

Yeah, 7 Wonders seems like a good, quick time. Based on the one time I've played it, it does come off rather Civ-vy despite being its own thing.

Played Archipelago again with a new player. The secret objective cards have scores for everyone regardless of what they did. So my "build the most temples" and my brother's "build the most markets" somehow put me on top. I was sorta peeved to come in first despite the other player pulling more than his own weight in skilled play. Looks like one has to be pretty balanced to in the early game if one wants to have a chance at scoring well. Fortunately, there's an open-faced trend card that allows everyone to have a shot in that way. It definitely favors experienced players, though--you can start to use deduction on who's going for what but only if you have prior, developed knowledge of game mechanics.

Meanwhile, Dead of Winter begs to be played. Lots of zombie standees + core mechanic being Walking Dead-style ethical dilemmas = oh yes.

Cities went down well in the couple of games I've played with it. I haven't tried out Leaders yet though.

How does that combine...with...um...the wonders?
I mean 7 wonders for 7 players I get, but one of the expansions is for 8 players...how?


Today we played our first game of power grid.
Took one hour to figure out the rules, and still not sure if we got everything right, because especially the 2nd phase was over pretty quickly.
In general it seems very balanced. You can build up a nice city network, but you immediately get punished if you're far ahead. You can plany in advance what resources you need, but that might backfire a bit, because everything might get cheaper next round and the other players will grab it then.
Very nice game in my opinion, need to play it more.


Played also a game of Machiavelli/Citadels.
I managed to not win due to my own stupidity.
Building number #8 was the...er...forgot the name, some tower, which allows you to destroy it and destroy with it another building in another city.
So I destroyed building #8, and took the museum of another player (worth 10 points) with me.
The loss of the tower brought me down by 3 points, but I was still ahead with 3 points.
Due to the loss of building #8, the warlord could attack me, destroying another building worth 3 points, which brought me down to second place. If I had kept my tower, the warlord would've been more likely to attack the player with the museum (who was ahead), and I might have won.
Was also for sure my own fault. I picked the assasin (just to play first, so that the thief and the magician can't mess with me), but didn't think of killing the warlord. Stupid me.
But was an awesome round .

Cities grants each player one extra card per phase, so if you really want to have eight players, each can have the usual seven per age, instead of Cities' normal eight. The game doesn't recommend you have eight players, though it does list it as an option.

As for the wonders, they've simply added more wonders, for a total of 14 if you have all three expansions (two in Cities, one in Leaders and four in Wonders).

Sounds like it would annoy the heck out of me ^^.
Let's play 7 wonders with 14 wonders .
But thanks, noted .
Still looking for something else for 7 or more players, and that's now rather out.

You realise that you're on a Civilisation forum complaining about a game with more than seven wonders in it?

If you want a seven-person game, though, it should work wonderfully as one. I highly recommend it.

@ civcube.

I've had to explain the rules to archipelago to new players 4 times now and re-tell some people a couple of times. The rules book really leaves something to be desired and at times things just need to be learnt of by heart as they aren't always consistent. For example migrating to buildings but being able to leave them with another action as long as you aren't engaged. I really like the game and having played it mostly with one other player but also with 4 of us I have to say that its much more fun with 3+ people as the negotiating and use of evolution cards is much more important, and in the case of some of the more aggressive cards less dickish if there is more than 1 person being effected.

I played my first game of Pandemic last week. Had a great time (just the 2 of us) and much to my surprise we won! Pretty sure we followed all the rules correctly as well. I like how you really have to come up with a plan that can strech multiple turns and then have it ruined by a massive outbreak in another part of the map. The only problem that my friend doesn't want to play again as she doesn't see the point since we won!

grandad1982 said:

@ civcube.

I've had to explain the rules to archipelago to new players 4 times now and re-tell some people a couple of times. The rules book really leaves something to be desired and at times things just need to be learnt of by heart as they aren't always consistent. For example migrating to buildings but being able to leave them with another action as long as you aren't engaged. I really like the game and having played it mostly with one other player but also with 4 of us I have to say that its much more fun with 3+ people as the negotiating and use of evolution cards is much more important, and in the case of some of the more aggressive cards less dickish if there is more than 1 person being effected.

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I think the rulebook is one of the best-designed in the hobby--amazing illustrations, helpful step-by-step organization--but the French-to-English translation really lets it down sometimes. Merchant and Trader cards, I'm looking at you!

Pretty darn good sale on Amazon today. Most of these titles are guaranteed to be sold out later today; if you want something, jump on it, like, now. I just got Quantum for less than $30.

Not on Amazon.co.uk, I'm afraid.

Just played a bunch at my friend's house over the weekend. I got in a round of Robinson Crusoe, which is kind of like a cooperative worker placement game where you all try to work together with your various characters to win a scenario. We played the first scenario, where we all had to build a massive fire to signal a rescue ship on the 10th through 12th turn and escape.

Also played a game with a name I am forgetting now, but it was kind of like the Resistance or Avalon except it was vampire-themed and did not have a regular turn order. Instead, players would take turns stabbing each other to reveal information about them, and the blue and red teams would be trying to take out the leader.

We also played Robinson Crusoe's first scenario last Wednesday. It's a beautiful looking game. I don't mind the fiddly bits when they contribute to a nice thematic feel. Of course, the discussion about what to do is the real meat of the game and probably not unlike character arguments in Lost. It's a very mean game, though. Your mistakes will start piling up and the dice mechanic can get your character slathered in inopportune moments, such as my Explorer twisting the same ankle twice in a row. The coffee shop closed before we could finish the first scenario but I'm looking forward to finishing it next week.

Coup: Reformation is a good expansion that does exactly what it needs to. By increasing the player count to 10, it's able to use a couple mechanics that really work best at that number, like the faction-switching that makes certain players unavailable to challenge. That's not to say it doesn't work at lower counts. It's still Coup, after all. You now happen to have more options with a fun little game that goes all out for flexibility.

It was a bit easy for us because we screwed up one of the rules. Long story short, we should have had a one-time additional labor disk for building, but we kept it in play for the rest of the game. So either we should have been rolling a lot more or suffering the consequences of not having the cure, shovel, and other techs we picked up cheaply.

Overall, I would play it again. I like putting a game like that or Pandemic into the rotation so that you all have a chance to play cooperatively and drop the tension a bit between competitive games.

grandad1982 said:

@ civcube.

I've had to explain the rules to archipelago to new players 4 times now and re-tell some people a couple of times. The rules book really leaves something to be desired and at times things just need to be learnt of by heart as they aren't always consistent. For example migrating to buildings but being able to leave them with another action as long as you aren't engaged. I really like the game and having played it mostly with one other player but also with 4 of us I have to say that its much more fun with 3+ people as the negotiating and use of evolution cards is much more important, and in the case of some of the more aggressive cards less dickish if there is more than 1 person being effected.

Click to expand...

I bought Archipelago for a friend and have hoped to play it, but having read the rules neither of us has been sufficiently tempted so far. This may be an issue with the rulebook, but it looks as though it's a game with excessive detail that would be more welcome if it were rewarded - instead it wasn't until I reached the action wheel section (described as phase 5 of the turn) that it appeared there was anything for the player to do except place the pieces the rules and drawn cards instructed every turn and watch the game play itself.

Bearing in mind that this is a gaming group who refuse to play Britannia and who haven't yet made it past set up (which does, admittedly, take an absurdly long time) on the Game of Thrones board game, and it may be that it's not the game for them...

One thing I had hoped would pique the interest was comparisons I've seen to Catan, which we do play quite a lot. I can see the resemblance having played Catan's Cities expansion, but not to the base game - and I for one wasn't impressed by that expansion (which, again, added a lot of detail that added little or nothing to gameplay for the most part except greater randomness).

Eldritch Horror - I never played Arkham Horror but I can't imagine how Eldritch could be streamlined from that. Granted, we had seven players, but we were struggling to finish the first phase for about four hours before a few people had to leave. It just. Kept. Going. I think part of the problem was that we weren't really able to synergize with other very well. We noticed too late that the Politician and the Psychic were able to trade items. Maybe next time. So far it looks like Fantasy Flight's usual array of "move your dude, get a condition card for no reason."

PhilBowles said:

I bought Archipelago for a friend and have hoped to play it, but having read the rules neither of us has been sufficiently tempted so far. This may be an issue with the rulebook, but it looks as though it's a game with excessive detail that would be more welcome if it were rewarded - instead it wasn't until I reached the action wheel section (described as phase 5 of the turn) that it appeared there was anything for the player to do except place the pieces the rules and drawn cards instructed every turn and watch the game play itself.

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Oh, they'll loathe Archipelago's endgame. I like it but it's not for everyone's taste. One: the game is shorter than you think, often lasting less than ten turns on short to medium modes. Two: the winning conditions are kept secret. The trick in this game is not just to build an engine, but to guess what other people are going for and try to make the most out of that. This can still feel too random for some people, especially if someone who wasn't playing very well wins anyway.