The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

That sounds like it has a lot of similarities to the Resident Evil game.

*sigh*....adding to the wish list.

I have been curious as to whether that Marvel game is any fun. It sounds really neat! I hope I can try that at Pax or something.

Cross posting from the Michigan S&T thread:

Forbidden Island - I had played before, but was a short and fun game for Matt, Matt and I to play while we waited for Joe. It turned out to be a bit trickier than we thought...we barely escaped with the treasure before the whole island sunk!

King of Tokyo - We played the base game once and the expansion once. I really enjoyed this game for some light fare. The first game was pretty much a run away due to some lucky early rolls but the second was really hotly contested. Some of the abilities you can buy are really fun and surprising, if not entirely balanced.

Colossal Arena - A really interesting bidding game. I ended up winning by killing off one of my champions (losing my bet in the process) in order to end the game early and make sure my secret bet character remained alive. Joe and I were really close in this game, having murdered off the champions that Matt and Matt backed heavily with some fiendish card placement.

Ra - I think I am in love with Ra. Since we played on Saturday I've picked it up for iOS and played a bunch of times. The auction/bidding mechanic combined with the tile collection has me hooked. Can't remember who won, but it was definitely not me!

Ra has so much staying power, that game will be on my top 10 for good, i think.

Cards Against Humanity announced they are issuing a pay as much as you want Holiday-themed expansion. Suggested cost, $5.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Cards Against Humanity announced they are issuing a pay as much as you want Holiday-themed expansion. Suggested cost, $5.

Sold!

I love the iOS version of Ra. The AI is surprisingly competent for a bidding game. Never played it with, you know, real people before though.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Cards Against Humanity announced they are issuing a pay as much as you want Holiday-themed expansion. Suggested cost, $5.

Sold!

Me too. Paid the suggested $5. If you want to screw around and see a bit of funny, try paying $0.00... or anything less than $0.50.

I've never even played the base game of CaHumanity, but after seeing that video, I think I want this expansion.

I may have a buying problem.

Yoyoson wrote:

I've never even played the base game of CaHumanity, but after seeing that video, I think I want this expansion.

I may have a buying problem.

Your biggest problem is that you haven't played the base game of CAH.

Castle Ravenloft for $30 on Amazon and eligible for Prime shipping.

SixteenBlue wrote:

Castle Ravenloft for $30 on Amazon and eligible for Prime shipping.

You know, I have other people I'm supposed to buy stuff for this time of year.... So I added a sweater for my girlfriend to the order.

Played Thunderstone Advance for the first time today. We really enjoyed it. It was a lot of the stuff I liked about Dominion with some significant improvements...it felt a lot more like I was doing something besides "well, I guess I'll buy a Smith."

Got a chance to play a friend's new copy of GMT's Mr. Madison's War: The Incredible War of 1812 earlier this week. The short description is that it's a card driven wargame in the vein of Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage centered around the Great Lakes theater during the War of 1812.

If you've played any army-based CDG such as Hannibal or Clash of Monarchs before you'll be right at home with the basic rules -- ops values to activate leaders of varying quality weighed against an interesting set of historical events on each card. There are three things that stuck out to me though that might make it a classic:

  1. The Naval system. Controlling the major lakes (Ontario, Erie, and to a lesser extent Champlain) opens up a whole host of interesting options related to supply, reinforcement, and amphibious assaults. That said, placing an emphasis on a navy on one lake will take away from your ground efforts and navies elsewhere, so there are a bunch of different directions you can choose to take strategically.
  2. The Supply system. The British forces need to trace their supply all the way back to Quebec along a narrow linkage. If the Americans manage to cut that route they can put the entire British army west of that point out of supply and largely ineffective. This ties fantastically into the naval system since a side can bypass the linear supply trace if they control the lake. In addition, amphibious invasions make it very easy for supply lines to be cut by the side that controls the water.

    Finally, each map square can only quarter so many troops over the winter. This forces players to sometimes have to break their armies up at the end of campaign seasons in anticipation and frequently delay major offensives until the beginning of the next year. Again, having control of a lake can be quite helpful for shuttling forces around for the winter.

  3. The Cards. I'm sure this has been done before, but I love that there is a separate deck of cards for each year of the war. This coupled with the fantastic illustrations and historical text allows the game to convey its historical flavor really well and build a fun narrative as it progresses. In addition, some cards (usually 3 ops) can be played as events to grant the player a flat victory point bonus. Talk about tough decisions when even a full hand never feels large enough to accomplish your goals!

We had a great time overall and I know I can't wait to get another shot at it! Highly recommended for any other wargamers out there.

edosan wrote:

Played Thunderstone Advance for the first time today. We really enjoyed it. It was a lot of the stuff I liked about Dominion with some significant improvements...it felt a lot more like I was doing something besides "well, I guess I'll buy a Smith."

I agree with you 100% and love Thunderstone (both advance and regular). If you don't mind the regular vs the advanced there is a nice online version of it on yucata.de There is also a version on Facebook if that is more your speed.

We played Alien Frontiers with the Factions expansion this weekend!

First, the unqualified good: Purple dice! Yes! I'm going to love these purple dice until the gray ones come along.

Secondly, the agendas. These are a win in my book too. Basically you get a couple Agenda cards. Each one has two goals, one achievable during the game (such as "steal from all opponents" or "have four alien tech cards") and one that can be scored at the end of the game (such as "control Pohl Foothills"). Both goals are worth one VP and you can only score one of them. You can have a maximum of three agenda cards, including scored ones, which prevents a player from trying to win only with VPs from agenda cards. Basically it adds a nice little side goal which makes your strategy a little more interesting and varied.

Then there are the factions. Each faction has an innate ability (such as "get extra sun resources each turn" or "you can launch colonies on the second-to-last circle") and a special building. Anyone can dock at the building but they must pay the owner sun to do so. I like having a reason to vary your strategy each game (apart from simply the fall of the dice), but my only qualm is that the factions seem kind of unbalanced. In the last game we played, my faction seemed so much more powerful than the one Shop got that it felt unfair.

Anyway, I would recommend this expansion to people who are already familiar with the base mechanics of Alien Frontier, with the caveat that people who are really offended by player imbalance might want to give it a pass, or only play with the Agenda Cards.

Aristophan wrote:

So my wife is out running errands with my oldest son, and she says she's swinging my the local game store and was wondering if I had a "board game emergency." I told her to see if they had Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game. Turned out they had one copy left, which was just put on the floor, so my wife picked it up, much to the delight of my son.

The game is a deck building game, much like Dominion or Thunderstone. Basically, you recruit heroes to fight henchmen, villains, and the mastermind. It is cooperative, but as you defeat villains you gather points and whoever has the most points at the end (if you defeat the mastermind) wins. The cards have some special effects, and there is synergy between certain cards, which encourages finding combos. In fact, the game was created by a former Magic: The Gathering designer. The game comes with a board to place cards, and a very nice insert that has room for many (MANY) more cards.

I played the beginner setup with my two boys (8 and 10). On your turn you reveal a villain card, play your cards to recruit heroes or fight enemies, and then discard everything and draw a new hand of 6 cards. We were up against Red Skull who was working on unleashing the power of the Cosmic Cube. The boys picked it up OK, but a mini board would have been nice for them to organize their cards. After playing for about 45 minutes, my youngest son fell into a combo with a powerful Wolverine Card and knocked out Red Skull in two turns. He won handily.

Overall we enjoyed the game, and I'm looking forward to trying out more heroes, as you only play with 5 out of 15. In fact, there is a lot of potential for variety in the game, through heroes, masterminds, villains, and schemes. It's also pretty obvious that there will be at least one expansion.

Postscript: As we played, by wife made several dozen homemade cookies. I am a lucky guy. :)

Make sure you check out the video series Watch It Played just did on this game.

edosan wrote:

Played Thunderstone Advance for the first time today. We really enjoyed it. It was a lot of the stuff I liked about Dominion with some significant improvements...it felt a lot more like I was doing something besides "well, I guess I'll buy a Smith."

You like Smiths? Ewww...

Demyx wrote:

We played Alien Frontiers with the Factions expansion this weekend!

First, the unqualified good: Purple dice! Yes! I'm going to love these purple dice until the gray ones come along.

Chumpy_McChump wrote:
edosan wrote:

Played Thunderstone Advance for the first time today. We really enjoyed it. It was a lot of the stuff I liked about Dominion with some significant improvements...it felt a lot more like I was doing something besides "well, I guess I'll buy a Smith."

You like Smiths? Ewww... ;)

No, I hate Dominion.

I still enjoy Dominion but I'm slowly getting less and less interested in it due to the lack of theme and other various game design problems. Having that said it's still my favorite deck building game by a long shot because of it's speed, easy to teach, but has great depth.

I'm beginning to realize that deck building shouldn't be the whole game, but rather it should be a game mechanic like how A Few Arces of Snow uses it (and Mage Knight? I've never played it).

I'll at least pick up Prosperity before I trade Dominion in. I keep on hearing it's easily the best one and makes it much more enjoyable.

A special Boardgamegeek auction: a Boardgamegeek regular, Tim Seitz (out4blood), (in)famous for breaking Martin Wallace's A Few Acres of Snow with his Halifax Hammer (and well known in veteran Age of Empires II circles), passed away suddenly, and a memorial auction is being held on BGG to raise money for his family: http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/150435/tim-seitz-out4blood-memorial-fundraiser-auction/page/1? Not only is it for a good cause, but there are some great deals there, since most of the contributors are offering free shipping.

Oh wow, that's one of the few bgg posters I recognize...that's incredibly sad. I'll check out the auction for sure.

Thanks for pointing that out Natus. We just very unexpectedly lost somebody I work with too, so this hits close to home even though I didn't know Tim.

Ugh, that's so sad. I played with out4blood a bunch, he was brutal.

So I just bought my friend Lords of Waterdeep for Christmas. Can that game be played with two players? I'm far too lazy to page back through the Waterdeep discussions.

Nevin73 wrote:

So I just bought my friend Lords of Waterdeep for Christmas. Can that game be played with two players? I'm far too lazy to page back through the Waterdeep discussions.

Yes, and it works very well. 2-4 are about ideal for it; 5 gets a bit too unwieldy, IMO.

My wife and I enjoyed the games we played of Lords of Waterdeep. Also, with 2 players you will likely get a ton of points, which is always fun.

Aristophan wrote:

My wife and I enjoyed the games we played of Lords of Waterdeep. Also, with 2 players you will likely get a ton of points, which is always fun.

I agree with this thought and prefer playing it with just two players. It has been a good "wife" game.

Natus wrote:

A special Boardgamegeek auction: a Boardgamegeek regular, Tim Seitz (out4blood), (in)famous for breaking Martin Wallace's A Few Acres of Snow with his Halifax Hammer (and well known in veteran Age of Empires II circles), passed away suddenly, and a memorial auction is being held on BGG to raise money for his family: http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/150435/tim-seitz-out4blood-memorial-fundraiser-auction/page/1? Not only is it for a good cause, but there are some great deals there, since most of the contributors are offering free shipping.

Wow, that is terrible. On a personal note, it turns out he lived in my town of Richmond and was part of a gaming group I had been meaning to go out and meet for the past couple of months. Quite a wakeup call about those things you mean to get around to "one day."