What boardgames did you just play?

I played Dominion for the first time on Wednesday evening. I didn't lose, but I certainly didn't win. It was pretty good fun.

Just watched Angry Joe live stream playing the recent Star Wars: Armada, this game looks awesome! Can be played with two people too... now I just need $90 to get it off Amazon.ca and another person to play with :/ Although I could probably find a second person.

Too late on collectible games for me. I'm already invested in Netrunner.

Played GIPF for the first time with a brother. It's definitely a hub game for other games in the Project but it's also...uh, GIPF-y. Very GIPF-y. You place pieces on the edge and slide them into the gameboard, hoping to make four in a row. Thing is, you make four in a row to capture your opponent's pieces as well as reloading your reserve of pieces. Run out of pieces to place and your opponent wins. We haven't played with full-out GIPF pieces yet, which allow you to capture two rows at the same time. Very much a mind-bender in the same way as YINSH. I've enjoyed all of Kris Burm's GIPF games because they tend to evoke the same feeling of tactical chaos. It's impressive how he's managed to take old-hat mechanics (e.g. checkers-jumping, straight-line rook movement) and twist them into very new games.

I finally got to play a game of Avalon! I was the assassin, but despite the Arthurians winning three missions out of five, I correctly identified and murdered Merlin for the Mordredian win.

I finally gave in and bought X-COM (the board game).

Overall it was better than expected. The components are well done, the use of the app is reasonable and the game itself is actually deeper than expected. There is a lot of luck involved in the dice rolls, but the players can do quite a bit of risk management. Only thing I didn't like was the lack of a manual - the rules are taught by the app and to check details you have to wait until the action shows up in the current round or use the index. Apparently they have released them as a PDF for free download now, but still: Using an app for a board game is okay, the lack of a printed version for your rules is not.

The game offers four roles:
Central Officer -> Controls the satellites, relays info from the app to other players, keeps track of thread and can re-arrange board pieces (to move UFOs or fix mistakes by other players)
Commander -> Controls the interceptors, manages the budged, keeps track of panic levels and deals with crisis
Squad Leader -> Controls the soldiers, defends the base and sends soldiers to missions
Chief Scientist -> Controls the scientists, researches techs and workshops tech items for one-use

The roles play quite different, but are all imporant for the game. While the rules for the scientist are easy, for example, he really has to make the right picks depending on the current situation. In fact, I'd say he has the most strategic impact despite his rather simple mechanics. There is also a bit of interaction between the roles. For example, the Squad leader turns defeated aliens over to the scientist, who can use their cards as salvage to boost research and the Commander can train soldiers from the Squad Leader to turn them into Elites or (with appropriate tech) use his interceptors for ground support.

What we noticed, though, is that we had quite a bit of downtime for everyone with 4 players, especially when it came to the resolution phase. The game seems to work much better with 2 players that take two roles at once. That way both of us were constantly engaged. Now we usually play with one guy being Commanding Officer and Commander and the other one being Squad Leader and Chief Scientist.

Overall I'd say it is a solid game with a high (but justifiable) price tag. If you like cooperative gameplay, are a fan of the X-COM universe and/or enjoy risk management - this might be your game.
I certainly didn't regret buying it.

This week's Humble Bundle has a bunch of Steam versions of classic games. I thought I'd mention it as they're so cheap to buy right now.

Recently played Fief: France 1429, a new release. It's basically Crusader Kings II: The Board Game. Features royal marriages, shifting alliances, characters you give your titles to, wars and building up your provinces, etc.

I've played a few games of Suburbia recently. I wanted it a while ago but playing Cities Skylines pushed me over the edge and I brought it. I really like how simple the rules are and how fast a turn can play even if your thinking or checking the effect of the tiles on each other. I also like the look and quality of the components. One of my favorite aspects is how as you build you create fairly distinct districts.

I also played a game of Memoir 44. It was only the first scenario with only infantry but I was really fun! I was the Axis holding Pegasus bridge from the Allied troops. Like in the actual battle it wasn't a balanced fight and I lost but I had such fun doing it and kept thinking about what I could have done differently. One thing I'd say is that my hand got clogged up with cards that couldn't be used with infantry so my choices became quite limited. It was half way through before I asked if I could discard them, so in future I'd house rule it that you could discard them as soon as you draw them

Played some more Memoir 44. Just the basic 1st scenario again but as it was with a person who hadn't played before that was ok as its an easy place to learn the basics. Again I really enjoyed it and my friend who, despite playing lots of games with me, is a bit board game sceptical and definitely doesn't see herself as a war gamer found it really tense and exiting. I think she enjoyed it as well because she beat me by 2 points in the match play we had (you play the same scenario twice, once as the allies and once as the axis)!

Card game, but I just learned Cthulhu Gloom - lots of fun and pretty entertaining.

Description:

In Cthulhu Gloom, you control a group of Lovecraftian protagonists and guide them down a path of horror and madness to an untimely death, while keeping your opponents happy, healthy, and annoyingly alive. While your characters Gibber With Ghouls and Learn Loathsome Lore to earn negative points, you'll encourage your opponents to be Analyzed by Alienists and to Just Forget About the Fungus to pile on positive points. When one group finally falls prey to the interdimensional doom that awaits us all, the player whose characters have suffered the most wins.

Click to expand...

grandad1982 said:

I've played a few games of Suburbia recently. I wanted it a while ago but playing Cities Skylines pushed me over the edge and I brought it. I really like how simple the rules are and how fast a turn can play even if your thinking or checking the effect of the tiles on each other. I also like the look and quality of the components. One of my favorite aspects is how as you build you create fairly distinct districts.

Click to expand...

Suburbia is really excellent. I quite like that even if I find myself in a position where I can't win (rare as the game is usually competitive to the end) it's still fun to just build a suburb.

I'm somewhat disappointed with the expansion, Suburbia Inc, though I haven't yet had the chance to play it. There are some nice new hexes, but the mid game bonuses look like they'll restrict play styles. Worse; the new border tiles are ugly. They follow the same clean design as the smaller hexes, but the monochrome pictures (which work well in the hexes) take up a considerably larger area and are tinted brown. The effect is drab. These tiles could have done with a bit more colour. Maybe I'll feel a bit different after I get to play it.

I've heard very good things about Castles of Mad King Ludwig recently. Also by Bezier Games and Ted Alspich; It has similar mechanics, but pieces are non-interlocking and players have the ability to reorder the tiles in the market place and receive income for all subsequent purchases.

Played multiplayer Puerto Rico for the first time in 9 years. As in two-player PR, I keep forgetting that it's all about the captain and the buildings. We also forgot that you can keep your goods into the next phase unless someone goes for the captain role. Otherwise, this is still as good as when it came out, even compared to the wealth of Euros out there that have inherited its mechanics. Possibly even a great gateway given the higher level of boardgame awareness nowadays.

Terra Mystica - Gnnnaarrrghus this game is so gritty my mouth tastes like chalk. Last time I played this I internally complained that the player board didn't seem to offer enough to do. Oh, how I was wrong. How. I was wrong. This is the min-maxer's dream come true--if you like agonizing over how much blood to squeeze from a stone, how much money to pinch out of all the coupons you've clipped in the past month, then this is the game for you. It's just such a bear to play because there are only six rounds to accomplish anything, while improving your buildings hampers your economy as much as it adds to the local area's score.

Oh yes, and forget about doing things at your own pace. Agricola thought it was the worst when it came to forcing your hand. If you want to get the most out of your constructions, you have to build them at a randomly set round. And your economy will dribble to a standstill unless you inject it with magic, which must be generated by either permanently sending your special workers to a graveyard, OR (and this is the kicker), burning half the magic you have almost available to use it now. It's these slippery dynamics of your internal economy, the randomized round objectives, and each player's special power that removes this game from being a clone of either Civ or Catan and places it in this weird zone where it's a pure scrabble for victory points. The theme is rather beside the point.

I have the (mis?)fortune of playing with techie/science types who know how to Sherlock Holmes their way through games like Terra Mystica, so I get to see how one mistake will blow up in my face. I'm a humble sociology type who might be getting better at things like this, but time will tell. I think I'm almost at the point where I can begin to read other players' intentions as well as figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing. It's still fiddly enough that I find myself focusing on one area only to fall apart in another--rather similar to Netrunner's level of complexity in that way.

Eclipse - Man, I don't know about this one. We just spent six hours last night playing through one game. A lot of that was spent grokking the rules, which are actually fairly reasonable. This game might be a tad too thin for my taste, though. The Euro rules for colony expansion and ship upgrades are nice, but they're wasted on Risk-style dice rolls for combat.

Eclipse, I think, is the simpler version of Twilight Imperium (not to be confused with Twilight Struggle, one of the best board games of all time). It is basically Master of Orion: The Boardgame.

I didn't enjoy the one time I played through it because there was so much going on; it occupied the old sweet spot of high complexity and "realism" that used to be the purview of bookcase games and is now the realm of video games.

I'm not sure if it's really that complicated. It's just slow, especially when you have to do combat. I'd say it's just a clunkier version of Impulse, which is still one of the more innovative games I've played.

Maybe I just didn't get a good explanation of the technologies, then. Because there seemed to be too many for a player to keep straight along with everything else going on.

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

Played Quantum in an impromptu boardgame session recently - not a lot to say about it, it's basically Yaghtzee in space, but it was fun for a session.

Haven't yet got to play, but I picked up the new Fantasy Flight reprint of Tigris & Euphrates, which I was very excited to see. It's a shame the components for monuments and leaders are plastic rather than wood, but the monument design is good (I prefer the old leader tokens) and I like the new tiles.

Interesting re: Quantum. I think it's a pretty solid game with some good things going on. It's great for newcomers who want to taste something different.

Played Caverna* after only playing Agricola a couple times. I'm digging the new expeditions and ruby actions. They allow for more fluid gameplay and more interesting combos. That said, if you don't go for the expeditions early, you're pretty much toast, as they're action-fests that keep getting bigger every time you use them. Otherwise, there really isn't much that's different that I can tell, aside from the non-randomized buildings. I'll definitely keep playing Agricola for the sheer variety of randomized buildings.

*Good gravy, there are even more wooden pieces...