Board Game thread

[Meacon Keaton]

I don't know what that is, but the board looks incredible. 

[apsham]

Story essentially goes that there's a valley where forest animals have lived for years but now it's time for them to spread out and make new cities and towns, so you get a hand of cards and slowly gather resources to play the cards either from your hand or the 8 that are in the 'meadow' or the middle section of the board there. Your town ends up looking like the section below the board as it can only have 15 cards in it, and after the end of three seasons you score and see who wins.

From the first game, it's really strategic and fun - but what puts it over the other stuff we've been playing recently is yeah, the board. Different aspects have different places on it... you put workers that you get in the coming seasons at the top of the tree, events you can claim in the middle, the draw pile goes inside the tree... it's really thematic which totally makes a game for me.

Plus those little blueberry resources look and feel dangerously close to the real thing to the point where I almost tried to eat one last night even though I knew it was just rubber.

[apsham]

So I know I mention a lot of card based games in here, but since they aren't really LCGs and are more boxed things like deck builders... I think I'll keep posts of that nature in here.

Speaking of deck builders, while Dominion is my absolute go-to I heard some good things about Ascension and put it to the side when I found out about all the expansions and... being a completionist and having a hard time finding anything but the base game around me, I kind of just let things be. I find the app for it the other day and was kind of blown away by the cost of the expansions on that... you get the base game for free and then the expansions after that were under 3 dollars.

Then last night I found out it's on Steam, and currently on sale. For $8.63 CAD I was able to pick up the game and EVERY expansion except for the latest one and that one is ALSO on sale for $4.34. Factor in that the base game alone in my local shop was $44 and good lord that's a deal. It has pretty great local play, online functionality and plays great. It's for sure something to look into.

[MalaCloudy Black]

https://kotaku.com/report-jimi-hendrix-on-acid-was-unbeatable-at-risk-1839153940

Quote

Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never — and me personally — ever beat him at all. He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he’s a paratrooper, and I don’t know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk.

 

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Probably because he'd take over Australasia. Classic Hendrix.

[apsham]

Hey yo, do you like word games like Scrabble or do you like deck builders like Dominion?

Pick this the fuck up ASAP.

Every player starts 10 cards in their hand - the first 8 are always the same and they're worth 1 cent when you play them, and then each player is dealt two random cards from a deck that contain different letters - and those two cards are worth one victory point.

You play your hand of cards like you do in other deck builders, but you're trying to make words. For every letter you use, you get cents to buy new cards or points to move yourself up a board. When you buy new cards they can be from 4 different genres (Horror, Crime, Romance, Adventure) and if you use two cards of the same genre together in a future word - you get additional benefits besides the ones that they offer by default.

There are a few extra rules (like buying little ink tokens and using them to get more cards in your turn, but you HAVE to use the card that you pull) but they're not all that confusing. And then past that, there's extra cards that allow you to play cooperatively against an AI called Penny Dreadful or add new features to the game.

I cannot recommend this more.

[Dan B.]

 

My girlfriend and I played this for the first time on Thanksgiving.  It's officially-licensed by Universal Pictures, and is a cooperative game pitting players against two or more of the classic Universal Monsters (choices being Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and the Bride of Frankenstein (who always go together), the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Wolf Man and the Invisible Man) to save the village.  Each monster has a different procedure required to defeat them.  There are seven archetypical hero characters with various abilities to pick from, and certain events may trigger NPC villagers to appear on the board, all of whom are secondary characters from the various films and can be guided to safety in exchange for bonus abilities (Abbott and Costello even make an appearance as a villager token!).  It gets pretty hectic as you're also on the clock twice over; the number of turns are limited before the monsters run amok, and there's a "Terror Meter" that goes up any time a player or villager is defeated by a monster and ends the game if maxed out.  (When defeated, players respawn at the hospital on their next turn, GTA-style, so the game continues until the players either collectively win or run out of time).

We did the suggested beginner game, with myself (as the Professor) and her (as the Scientist) vs. Dracula and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  We managed to defeat Drac without too much trouble, but the Creature gave us some difficulty until we finally overcame him last-minute.  Working out teamwork strategy is definitely a key part of this one, which is a refreshing break from player-vs-player games.  At any rate, it's great fun and I recommend it especially for fans of classic horror movies.

We're planning to fight Mr. and Mrs. Frankenstein the next time we play, with probably either the Mummy added to the mix for an all-Karloff game, or maybe the Invisible Man to go against the full James Whale collection.

I also look forward to defeating the Wolf Man for the first time, just so I can make the requisite Monster Squad reference ("Wolf Man's got nards!")

Edited November 30, 2019 by Dan B.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

My work colleague/friend has just opened an Etsy store selling glittery resin meeples. After plenty of discussions with me she decided she wanted to use her resin modelling skills for the geekier among us and add some glitter and bright colours. We used some of my Carcassonne meeples to make the moulds and since then she's been perfecting the process and is offering sets for people. All the photos on that page were badly taken by me and are of meeples she's made which I now have.

It's a well good gift for a family member or friend, choose their favourite colour, choose how sparkly you want them and they (or you) then have a personal set of 8 meeples to use in games in the future. Her Etsy is below, it's £9.99 per set of 8.

 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/745992144/magical-meeples-you-choose-the-colour?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=meeples&ref=sr_gallery-1-9

[K]

Got three games for Christmas.

Azul is really good fun, very easy, very pretty. Fast and addictive.

The two-player Rivals For Catan seemed very complicated but once we played one round I think we pretty much got the hang of it. 

The Taskmaster board game. Christ this is a party game. Took it to my sisters house and we absolutely wrecked the place. Running around the garden at 10pm, ripping stuff out of her kitchen cupboards, tin foil flying everywhere. Great stuff. Needs to be played in a home though. No taking this one to the pub or whatever.

[IDOL]

My son is super into Pokémon so he, my wife and I all have been learning how to play the trading card game. It always seemed too daunting to me, but we are getting the hang of it and it is super fun. Definitely shouldn’t have waited so long to play.

[lanky316]

Back when Pokemon cards were all the rage we did the unthinkable and actually played with them as intended and there are a lot of little nuances and stuff and it is a surprisingly good game. Far preferred it to Magic and similar but got off that wagon before I had too much free income to fall down that rabbit hole luckily. Worth a go for people who haven't looked into it before!

[Malenko]

On 02/01/2020 at 05:07, K said:

Got three games for Christmas.

Azul is really good fun, very easy, very pretty. Fast and addictive.

The two-player Rivals For Catan seemed very complicated but once we played one round I think we pretty much got the hang of it. 

The Taskmaster board game. Christ this is a party game. Took it to my sisters house and we absolutely wrecked the place. Running around the garden at 10pm, ripping stuff out of her kitchen cupboards, tin foil flying everywhere. Great stuff. Needs to be played in a home though. No taking this one to the pub or whatever.

Azul is great. When we want a quick and fun game we often pick Azul.

Anyway. We bought Gloomhaven. Took forever to actually understand the rules and prepare everything. So far we are terrible at it, but we're improving and I think we'll have lots of fun with it.

[Krabby]

On 01/01/2020 at 22:07, K said:

Got three games for Christmas.

Azul is really good fun, very easy, very pretty. Fast and addictive.

The two-player Rivals For Catan seemed very complicated but once we played one round I think we pretty much got the hang of it. 

The Taskmaster board game. Christ this is a party game. Took it to my sisters house and we absolutely wrecked the place. Running around the garden at 10pm, ripping stuff out of her kitchen cupboards, tin foil flying everywhere. Great stuff. Needs to be played in a home though. No taking this one to the pub or whatever.

How have you found the learning curve for rivals of catan?

[Toe]

11 hours ago, Malenko said:

Azul is great. When we want a quick and fun game we often pick Azul.

Anyway. We bought Gloomhaven. Took forever to actually understand the rules and prepare everything. So far we are terrible at it, but we're improving and I think we'll have lots of fun with it.

The first scenario in Gloomhaven is a real pain. The game gets better as you go along.

[Krabby]

Does anyone here play on or have an account on WarGear?

And/or would anyone like to get some turn-based Risk games going on there - lots of fun maps. Some of my other friends and I play there.

[Malenko]

On 28/01/2020 at 15:53, Toe said:

The first scenario in Gloomhaven is a real pain. The game gets better as you go along.

We failed 3 times, then my girlfriend changed character and we passed it. I'm the spellweaver. I chose it just because I liked the backstory but now I like the cards as well. Obviously the problem is she has less cards so I have to rest more often and can't take a lot of damage, but I still like it a lot.

[Toe]

11 hours ago, Malenko said:

We failed 3 times, then my girlfriend changed character and we passed it. I'm the spellweaver. I chose it just because I liked the backstory but now I like the cards as well. Obviously the problem is she has less cards so I have to rest more often and can't take a lot of damage, but I still like it a lot.

Spellweaver has some great stun cards, and getting your lost cards back is awesome. 

[K]

Went to the board game cafe with Ollie and Luke over the weekend, played a few things. Highlight for me was Concept.

Quote

Concept is a quiz board game where players have to guess a concept, which can be a word, a name, or a phrase. Hints about the concept are given by marking the concept, its attributes, and related concepts on the game board with different-coloured markers. Giving verbal hints is not allowed.

So basically you have this board

and you have little markers, and you have to silently transmit a film/person/concept/building/whatever, by placing little markers next to the icons that might be relevant. So for Dracula you might mark the 'male' square, the 'moon' square,  and the 'skull/death' square.

You can also do sub categories. So for Leika, the space dog. Luke and Ollie marked out that it was a 'dead' 'animal', and that in a sub category, there was 'mechanical' and 'electronic' 'transport' involved. A further sub category noted that there was a 'red' 'flag'

All very clever. Highly recommend.

Also been playing a shit load of Balderdash and I'm loving it

edit: Beyond Balderdash. The one with the different categories.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I love Beyond Balderdash. I used to laugh far more playing that back in the day than I probably had any right to.

 

And yes, Ollie and my clues for Laika were truly tremendous and worthy of all the praise! Concept was a cool game.

[apsham]

Remember how I was kind of getting into this hobby when I was posting here last?

Yeah it got of got away on me. As of my last count I'm on well over a hundred games.