The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

I didn’t play enough to call myself proficient but this was a nice intro to the basics, made be at least not worthless against friends who had played quite a bit: https://senseis.xmp.net/?MasterGoInT...
IMAGE(http://www.yutopian.com/yut/images/prod/PAY11.jpg)

Tried the Spirit Island pc version. Works well and I think the automation is really nice. That said the game is damned hard. Have to play on below easy to have a chance...

master0 wrote:

Tried the Spirit Island pc version. Works well and I think the automation is really nice. That said the game is damned hard. Have to play on below easy to have a chance...

Try Vital Strength of the Earth with Lightning's Swift Strike for probably the simplest effective spirit team-up. Vital provides defense and Lightning blows up invaders quite nicely.

In shocking news Go is very difficult. Who knew! Seriously i think i may love it.

Speaking of Spirit Island, I got my Jagged Earth expansion in the mail a few days ago. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but there is a ton of content here. Between the expansion and the new promos it is adding 12 new spirits to play. And they are all wildly different in how they play. I can't wait to try them out.

Are there any good options out there for keeping a personal database of boardgames? My initial thoughts were just a simple list in like a Google Doc then figured I may as well see if anyone has better options.

The Collection feature on Boardgamegeek.com is the obvious option. I've been back and forth on using it, but it is an easy way to keep a list. It also makes it easy to track plays (if you care) or mark things for wishlists, games to trade, etc. There are also some phone apps that people have written to tie into the BGG database.

Boudreaux wrote:

The Collection feature on Boardgamegeek.com is the obvious option. I've been back and forth on using it, but it is an easy way to keep a list. It also makes it easy to track plays (if you care) or mark things for wishlists, games to trade, etc. There are also some phone apps that people have written to tie into the BGG database.

You can also export it to a csv file for all your spreadsheet needs.

Malkroth wrote:

Are there any good options out there for keeping a personal database of boardgames? My initial thoughts were just a simple list in like a Google Doc then figured I may as well see if anyone has better options.

BGG is totally the way to go. Create a free account and start adding games. Now I get itchy when I've played a game but haven't recorded it. Did I really play it, then? It's been especially difficult during quarantine to remember all the games I've played online, for some reason.

For tracking plays I highly, highly recommend the Board Game Stats app. It syncs up with BGG so it can put your plays on there as well as track your collection. It also has a lot of great ways to break down the stats if you want to nerd out on it. Stuff like high scores overall or with certain groups of people, win rates, your H-index, play time, and lots more.

+1 on BGstats. I've logged every play since 1st Jan 2017.

Played Fort with the family yesterday for the first time. My kids immediately recognized the art style and asked if it was like Root
Despite that I did terrible and had no plan or strategy I really enjoyed the game. Looking forward to getting more games of it played soon. The icons on the cards are easy enough to quickly scan what all is available around the table once you get use to them without needing to read every card. Seems like it will play pretty quick after a game or two because of this.

Hi all, cross-posting in a few relevant threads,

If anyone is interested in being a guinea pig form me and blind play testing the game I'm currently working on the TTS link is here: Beer 'n Monsters - The Last Drop

It's a commission from an Australian film company to create a tie in product to go with the movie which is currently in pre-production with some known actors attached.

The game is a lightweight full Co-op survival horror/comedy in tone.

The game is designed and I am now waiting on my partner to commission the artwork and do the creative fluff stuff on the rulebook. My biggest area of concern is people being able to read and learn the game from the rulebook so I'm at the point that I want to get some blind playtests and feedback.

Give it a look if you like and any feedback that is rules related would be much appreciated.

Hi peeps, sorry if I'm a filthy skimmer and this has already come up, but I'm looking for suggestions of something I can possibly play at work in downtime without any of the physical components.

The situation is I am in a room of people answering assistance requests, and sometimes it's very slow. But, a request could come in at any time to sideline a player.

We are all on computers but would not be permitted to go to any websites. We have Skype for business, and we can use excel but only in an individual way, nothing like Google docs. We can use the snipping tool or paint I guess to draw things. No access to phones. We have the annoying as @#$& windows alarms and clock timer.

Insider might almost be good except no way that I can think of to deal the roles unless there was someone that wasn't playing to send them all out. (Don't want to play boring old 20 questions by itself) Could possibly do a f***ed up version where everyone rolls for their role and we keep rolling until one person in the set has rolled Master (with an unknown mix of insiders and commons) Actually the more I think about it, it would be difficult to do the word reveal part as well.

I thought about telestrations, but everyone would have to write their own starting word every time and I'm not sure how great that would turn out. Plus, to do a full circle would take a fair bit of time and somebody would probably get a request they'd have to go answer.

Fake Artist Goes to New York might be a go.

If it was my friends, they'd be happy to play Qwixx all day, but that would be too abstract and a boring numbers game for my colleagues.

I've got a Just One copy on the way to me to give a go. One round would be short enough, and it's not like the scoring really matters. I'll just write the word big on one of the stands and we can send our clue words on Skype. When it's my turn someone else will make up their own word and I will just have a plastic thing to wipe down I guess.

Please help, if I don't have something to occupy the colleagues some of them will spout on about what they think of coronavirus and how Trump is good.

Contact requires at least three people, one person to create a word and at least two people to guess it.

The word creator thinks of a word and gives the guessers the first letter. The guessers' objective at this stage is to get the word creator to give them the second letter of the word. They do this by coming up with words that they can guess, but the creator can't.

This is best illustrated with an example.

Say the creator's word is "apple." The creator says his word starts with the letter "a." The guessers try to think of words that also start with the letter "a." One of the guessers thinks of the word "apathy" and gives the group a clue, say "This is a symptom of depression."

If the word creator can come up with a word that fits the clue, say "apathy" or "anhedonia," they say "It's not apathy" or "It's not anhedonia," and the guessers have to think of another clue.

If the word creator cannot think of a word, but one of the other guessers can, the other guesser says "Contact" and the guessers say the word together after counting down from 3. If they both say the same word, the creator has to give them the next letter. If they say different words, or if none of the other guessers knows what the clue means, then the guessers have to think of another clue.

Once you have two or more letters, the guessers can only use words that start with those letters. For instance, once the creator gives the letters "ap," the guessers can only use words like "application," "aptitude," or "apoptosis." After three or four letters it usually becomes obvious what the word is, and players can start guessing the word.

A few house rules:

The word creator's word must be a dictionary word, and it shouldn't be a word the group is unlikely to know. My favorite Contact word is "tractor" because it's a word that everyone knows, but people don't think about too quickly.
The word guessers can use any word they want, including phrases and proper nouns. They are welcome to give obscure clues that the creator probably wouldn't know, but if they do that too much it kind of spoils the game. It's best if they're clues that the creator is expected to know, but doesn't for some reason. No advanced math if you're playing with 8th graders! And no asking me about Pokemon if you've already used two Pokemon clues and have established that I know nothing about the subject.
The word creator always gets one guess before the guessers can guess the word.
Most important rule: Have fun!

Cross posting here from the International GWJ Days 2020 thread:

Having just caught Amoebic streaming a game of Root on the GWJ Twitch channel. I've added it as a suggestion in the spreadsheet under the online board gaming tab.

It's a really fun game of asymmetrical woodland warfare and the digital adaptation of the board game is very good. (available for PC & iOS/Android on tablets)

Please put your name down if you're interested and if there's enough interest, I can work out a day/time that suits.

(The link to the spreadsheet for sign-ups is at the foot of the main post.)

Mermaidpirate wrote:

Hi peeps, sorry if I'm a filthy skimmer and this has already come up, but I'm looking for suggestions of something I can possibly play at work in downtime without any of the physical components.

When my friends and I were bored and out-and-about, we used to play Ghost. No materials needed. One person starts off by choosing a letter of the alphabet. Each person in turn appends one letter to the growing list of letters. If a player adds a letter that creates a valid word, that player loses the round. Alternatively, instead of appending a letter to the growing word, the player may challenge the previous player to name a valid word starting with the list of letters that's already been given. If the challenged successfully names a valid word, then the challenger loses the round; and vice-versa if a word cannot be named. When a player loses a round, they add a letter to their personal loss counter (G-H-O-S-T, similar to how the basketball game "Horse" is scored).

House rules that we used to use in addition to the vanilla ruleset:
1) A valid word must be at least 4 letters long; i.e. a player may safely spell the word "the".
2) Letters may be appended or prepended, but not inserted somewhere in the middle; and a challenged player may form any word that contains the accumulated letters (in sequential order) anywhere. This house rule makes the game MUCH more difficult to play.

We've probably had gaming tables come up a few times in this thread so I apologize for the rehash but we're now in the market for one and I'd love to hear recommendations from this esteemed group. My main requirements are:
* I dont want to have to wait forever for it, 6 weeks max
* seats 6+
* has a multi-leaf topper (rather that one big dining surface, I hear they warp too easily)
* is under or close to $2000 USD (before chairs and options)

I was looking at this Jasper table and was nearly sold but the gaming surface seems pretty rough and cheap. I think its a thick felt.

I have one of their tables from a previous Kickstarter, and the gaming surface is neoprene backed by rubber. It’s a really good surface, great for rolling dice and using cards and maps. You can take it out and clean it easily. Highly recommended.

Edit - I stand corrected, they are using polyester felt. I trust them; they have put in a *lot* of testing time on their tables, but you could drop in the neoprene one if you didn’t like it, I’m sure.

The table I bought was their lowest offering at the time and it is *spectacular*. High quality, a bit finicky to assemble, but one of the best furniture purchases I’ve ever made.

Oh, and I strongly recommend adding the wing shelf and the cup holders. The former lets you easily use a laptop or tablet, and the latter will keep bevvies off the table.

Board Game Tables brings several of their tables to display/use at Geekway to the West here in St. Louis every year, and I've played on several of them. They're nice and I've never felt like the playing surface was cheap. The tables themselves aren't super fancy but they have a nice, hand-built feel to them.

Well great! Thanks that helps a lot

Edit: Jasper ordered. I went through one of their similar custom tables that's just a little bigger and it adds like $2k to the price, so I'll just get a Jasper

I got a group together for Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion last weekend, and we had a lot of fun (racing through the first 4 scenarios, which are tutorial mode).

Definitely feeling better about jumping into this one than I did about the full Gloomhaven: I had a chance to join that at the beginning from a friend who backed the kickstarter but avoided it due to not enough time back then (and that group are still going on the base game scenarios!)

Quite enjoyed all the characters so far, and so did the rest of the group (we have four so all are in the game). A range of styles and abilities that seem to complement each other well.

Polypusher, looking at it, that seems like the upgraded version (or production version) of the one that I got. The general build looks the same. You're going to *love* it.

One thing, though, is to be sure that the table base panels (the ones that slide into the edges to form the playing area base) are right side up. They have a bit of flex to them and you want them all with that flex facing the right way (so gaps don't appear when you put weight on the playing surface. I have one piece that is facing the wrong way and I think because of that two screws are not flush. But of course the neoprene settles that problem with no issues.

It's a great table.

Thanks for the note, I'll pay extra attention to the instructions and orientation of things. Maybe they've made it easier to identify which side goes what way since your order.

Since we’re talking game setups, what is the easiest way to set up lights? I’ve only ever lived in homes with cheap central light sources above the table or supplemented with standing lamps. Always terrible. Apparently I need multi-point recessed diffuse light or similar to be able to well read cards and maps and things on the table? Google image search of what I think is required:

IMAGE(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0d/20/05/0d2005d44b819f09578180ed629e1ae5.jpg)

What is easy to install and works well? I’m moderately tolerant to price variation.

Keithustus wrote:

Since we’re talking game setups, what is the easiest way to set up lights? I’ve only ever lived in homes with cheap central light sources above the table or supplemented with standing lamps. Always terrible. Apparently I need multi-point recessed diffuse light or similar to be able to well read cards and maps and things on the table? Google image search of what I think is required:

What is easy to install and works well? I’m moderately tolerant to price variation.

I installed this and it works incredibly well:

Aero Snail L1697 Modern Style Flush Mount Designers Metal 10-Light Ceiling Lamp Chandelier Lighting Fixure https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M36GSVR...

PAX Unplugged is officially cancelled. I'm not surprised and probably wouldn't have gone this year anyway, but still a bit bummed.

The official Tabletop Simulator mod is available for Frostpunk The Board Game over on the Steam Workshop

I enjoyed Frostpunk the video game a lot and the board games has had some favorable early reviews.

So...there is a mod to play the board-game version of the video game as a video game?

Nevin73 wrote:

So...there is a mod to play the board-game version of the video game as a video game?

This just broke my brain...but 100% accurate.