2010 - the year we make contact...with more Board Games

I received Carcassonne: The City this weekend and we gave it a couple of 2 player runs. It was a lot of fun. The core game is essentially a re-skin of classic Carcassonne with a few strategic tweaks to enhance the possibilities of screwing over your opponent and making more impactful decisions.

The feature I like most about it is that after you place x amount of tiles, you place a city gate and start to envelop your growing city with walls. This wall cuts off roads, markets, and neighborhoods and prevents future building, it is also a timer towards the end of the game. When the city is enclosed the game ends and you start scoring. This provides a real sense of urgency if you're behind other players. It also looks pretty cool

I think Carcassonne is a fabulous game, but I've stopped bringing it to our game night in hopes that we can learn something more in-depth. Dominion and Puerto Rico are filling that role nicely - on to Pandemic and Power Grid soon I hope.

We played Power Grid for the first time last night and I think everyone enjoyed it as much or more than Catan. The game ended up surprisingly close given that none of us had ever played it before and thus we had no clue how to value each of the power plants up for auction. After a few rounds, though, I'd say everyone had a firm grasp of what was going on. All-in-all, it was very enjoyable and I'm looking forward to getting a chance to play it again.

Kilaban wrote:

Thought I'd share something from our session last night. A regular showed up with his girlfriend, a Yale Divinity School student. The typical banter was not tempered by her presence At one point playing Dominion I had tons of curses so wanted to buy/build some Chapels to clear them out. I yelled out "I gotta get some chapel erection going on here!" I really meant the construction meaning, but it was too late.

Funniest gaming moment we've had so far. It was a great time. No word on if she's coming back next week, heh.

Nice!

Went to Portland, OR, this past weekend, and I bought some games: Gloom, Kung Fu Fighting, and More Kung Fu Fighting, and Krysis. I can't wait to try Krysis out, it looks really neat.

A group of friends and I annually do a five day board game retreat, which just occurred a few weeks ago. The two games that came out of that weekend as new 'games I love' are Le Havre (the second game from the designer of Agricola) and Power Grid Factory Manager. I had never player either of them, and loved them both intensely.

My other weekend favorites were Space Hulk and Battlelore, though neither of them are new.

My little group is enjoying Gloom quite a lot.

Its a card game where you have a family of 5 generally gloomy types and your goal is to make them suffer in banality and then die an unheroic, merciful death. The cards you play on other players are good things, adding positive points. You want as many negative points as possible for your own family. The player with the most negative points wins.

Storytelling is encouraged. It's easy to spin a little tale about Lord Slogar, the brain in a box, when he's Cursed by the Queen, Swindled by Salesmen, and finally Died old and Alone.

The game is printed on clear plastic cards that you create a stack with, you can see the character portrait and each of the modifiers that aren't covered by ones on higher cards so its a pretty cool little presentation.

Gloom is great fun.

Played a lot of games recently. We played our first game of B-Star G, and we loved it. So much fun. I love how the board is there basically just to facilitate the social interaction.

We've also been playing a ton of Small World lately. We really like that game.

Last week I picked up Runewars. Played a solo 2-player game to learn the rules. It is awesome. I'll be playing my first real game next week.

Saturday we played a game of Battlestar Galactica that kinda soured me on it. The first half was going really well but then in the 2nd half we got hit with 2 cylons, out of only 4 players. In hindsight, we think the sympathizer used a location once or twice that he shouldn't have, but our problem was that we got hit with everything all at once and despite doing a good job of conserving resources in the first half, we were completely incapable of stopping their rapid bleed off in the 2nd half (what with there being only 2 of us, Roslin & Tyrol). We somehow managed to survive long enough to jump away from a bajillion raiders only to fail because both destination cards left us with 0 (or less) fuel.

It takes a couple of playthroughs and/or a reading of all the cards in all the decks to grok that some resources cannot be restored or can only be restored if you're lucky enough to have shuffled the deck well (fuel can only be recovered by a select few destination cards).

I played some Pandemic over the summer. My friends and I had a blast with it, though there was some squabbling about whether it was balanced without such and such role in play. It seemed almost unbeatable with three players and no Medic, but totally manageable (almost easy) with four, a Medic and a Dispatcher.

I really like the idea of a co-op board game, so I was excited to try out Pandemic, but I'm not sure I'm sold. It didn't feel like every player really mattered. The roles did, but the players didn't. Meaning that, since you're constantly coordinating with your team, one or two strong players can basically control the game. Not intentionally or egotistically or anything, but each player's actions need to be spent precisely, and if one player has a great plan for the next four turns, then the rest of the players might not feel like they're contributing anything.

I'm wondering if there are any co-op games that don't feel like you could just play them with one person moving four pieces. Maybe something like BSG would work, where it's sort of a co-op-versarial game. Or as they call it, "semi-cooperative."

scribble wrote:

I really like the idea of a co-op board game, so I was excited to try out Pandemic, but I'm not sure I'm sold. It didn't feel like every player really mattered. The roles did, but the players didn't. Meaning that, since you're constantly coordinating with your team, one or two strong players can basically control the game. Not intentionally or egotistically or anything, but each player's actions need to be spent precisely, and if one player has a great plan for the next four turns, then the rest of the players might not feel like they're contributing anything.

That's exactly what happened in our first (and thus far, only) game of Pandemic. My brother and I kind of took over the game as we were talking out various strategies. It seemed fine at the time, but looking back afterward, I can see how people who weren't going through strategies with us would feel left out. I'm not really sure how that situation can be avoided, though. I guess if you can get a group of people who have all played the game several times, everyone should have an idea of what strategies work and thus be able to contribute.

scribble wrote:

I really like the idea of a co-op board game, so I was excited to try out Pandemic, but I'm not sure I'm sold. It didn't feel like every player really mattered. The roles did, but the players didn't. Meaning that, since you're constantly coordinating with your team, one or two strong players can basically control the game. Not intentionally or egotistically or anything, but each player's actions need to be spent precisely, and if one player has a great plan for the next four turns, then the rest of the players might not feel like they're contributing anything.

I'm wondering if there are any co-op games that don't feel like you could just play them with one person moving four pieces. Maybe something like BSG would work, where it's sort of a co-op-versarial game. Or as they call it, "semi-cooperative."

It's a danger of any co-op game, I think, especially ones where the players are specialized.

I'm really looking forward to the new Dominion expansion - Prosperity.

Here's a PDF with the rules and all the card descriptions: http://www.riograndegames.com/uploads/Game/Game_361_gameRules.pdf

I own all of the currently released expansions, I absolutely love this game.

If you're just getting started apart from the original, Intrigue is my favorite expansion so far and Alchemy is my least favorite.

scribble wrote:

I'm wondering if there are any co-op games that don't feel like you could just play them with one person moving four pieces. Maybe something like BSG would work, where it's sort of a co-op-versarial game. Or as they call it, "semi-cooperative."

Check out the hot-off-the-presses game Defenders of the Realm. Many of the mechanics are very similar to Pandemic but this time there's a fantasy theme slapped on top. There are a few other changes that give it a different feel, though, and help remove some of the "group puzzle solving" element:

- You are heroes defending the kingdom from four big bad bosses sending minions out to corrupt the land and try to destroy the main city. I think the four bad factions are dragons, undead, demons and orcs... who doesn't love that?

- There's probably a dozen different heroes to pick from and they all feel wildly overpowered. Which is awesome because each player can do crazy epic things that nobody else can do. It makes each player feel like they are really doing cool awesome stuff.

- The game has similar mechanics with how minions (cubes in Pandemic) appear on the board and spread (like the breakouts in Pandemic). Fighting them (and the big bosses) along with clearing corruption requires some dice rolling, though. This removes the predictability of Pandemic. Without that perfect information it feels like things are more up to individuals and how much they want to push their luck.

- Each player has a quest they can be working on. They can be a distraction from the main goal but the rewards are often nice and can really help out the group in the long run.

- Yes, the group wins or loses as a whole. Either they fight off the baddies or they are completely overrun. However, should you win, one of the players is crowned the King's Champion based on how many bosses you killed and quests you completed. It's a small thing but adds a fun competitive edge to the game; you really want to do what is best for the group while still trying to also do what is best for yourself Sure I could go kill some guys at a spot on my turn, but I have this quest over here that gets me some awesome boots of speed which will certainly make it easier for us down the road...

- The game seems to be extremely hard I think the designer (who also designed Arkham Horror) has said that a good team will probably win 30% of the time. We were completely crushed in our first game and the second was going well until one of the bosses kicked the crap out of us, then things went downhill really quickly as we scrambled to recover. Of course we also found Pandemic very challenging at first but now have learned how to cope with the game's challenges and games usually come right down to the wire. There's certainly going to be a learning curve with Defenders but I think due to the additional randomness the game will tend to be more difficult. There's no such thing as a guaranteed most efficient move with that level of unpredictability, which again lends itself to more individual choices rather than group decision making.

We just got the game and only played two back-to-back games yesterday but I was really impressed with Defenders of the Realm. It takes longer than Pandemic... I think our games were around 1 1/2 hours maybe. It also lacks some of the elegance that Pandemic has but it more than makes up for it in theme and fun. If you like the concept of Pandemic but it doesn't quite click, maybe give this a try.

Personally I really like the sort of group puzzle-solving aspect of Pandemic and appreciate its simplicity and fast style of play. Defenders of the Realm really nails the fun factor though and if we have the time will likely be our new co-op of choice.

mrwynd wrote:

I'm really looking forward to the new Dominion expansion - Prosperity.

Wow, another one? My friend has an epic organization system involving card boxes, filing tabs, and the iPhone app.

I think I'm gonna have to pick up an expansion or two, plus I've got Thunderstone (like Dominion but instead of a town your deck represents an RPG party) and want to check out Puzzle Strike (also like Dominion, but with more aggressive interaction). Hopefully it's a mechanic that won't get old.

7inchsplit wrote:
mrwynd wrote:

I'm really looking forward to the new Dominion expansion - Prosperity.

Wow, another one? My friend has an epic organization system involving card boxes, filing tabs, and the iPhone app.

I listened to an interview with Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande and he said that Dominion was originally designed with hundreds of different cards. Some were in better states of readiness than others but he said they have more than enough ideas that so long as there's demand for more Dominion they can keep providing.

I think Pandemic will work well this year at school, where we'll have time to play it a lot and, like billt said, everyone will get a chance to learn the strategies.

I also just learned that there's an expansion that adds some cool, optional twists, plus rules for a fifth player.

Gazebo, I will definitely look into Defenders of the Realm. I think conflicting goals or just the injection of some competition might be what I'm looking for in my co-op games.

Co-op games with perfect information are absolutely prone to being dominated by the person who sees the puzzle fastest, or just the person who is most outgoing/demanding.

Although I enjoy these sorts of co-op games (Pandemic, Forbidden Island) I tend to prefer co-op experiences with some other random governing aspects (Arkham with the combat, Battlestar & Shadows with the traitor). My favorites though are the 1 vs many, where one player is the GM of sorts, either as a guide (Battlestations) or is working directly against the other players (MiddleEarth Quest, Descent). Interestingly, games like Fury of Dracula combine the 1 vs many aspect, but for the hunters pursuing Dracula, it really boils down to ~75% logic + some gambling on the odds on what you know is in Drac's hand. Thus it's still very prone to the player who groks it fastest or is persuasive/overbearing.

In my mind, Forbidden Island is a perfect 20 minute game to start or end the evening. Sadly games like Arkham require WAY too much management to make for timely play, never mind Descent (Road to Legend particularly). Awesome games all around though.

I'm taking it old skool, and have started playing Go.

A friend of mine was talking about it, and turned up at my house with a board and a bottle of wine a few weeks later.

Only played a handful of games so far, so I'm still very much finding my feet, but I can already sense the yawning chasm of tactical depth below me as I tread water on the surface.

It's also served as a boost to my gaming ego, as after only a couple of games, I'm already wiping the floor with the friend who introduced me to it, as well as the wife

Jonman wrote:

I'm taking it old skool, and have started playing Go.

A friend of mine was talking about it, and turned up at my house with a board and a bottle of wine a few weeks later.

Only played a handful of games so far, so I'm still very much finding my feet, but I can already sense the yawning chasm of tactical depth below me as I tread water on the surface.

It's also served as a boost to my gaming ego, as after only a couple of games, I'm already wiping the floor with the friend who introduced me to it, as well as the wife :)

You're a better man than I, Jon.
I've struggled with getting started in Go for several years. I mean, I know how to play and have played the occasional game against CPU opposition (haven't played any real life opposition yet), but I just can't seem to get any better at it after several (read 10+) attempts. I guess my eyes aren't seeing the varying levels of strategy the same way they do with other games.

Maybe I just need to play more.

HedgeWizard wrote:

In my mind, Forbidden Island is a perfect 20 minute game to start or end the evening. Sadly games like Arkham require WAY too much management to make for timely play, never mind Descent (Road to Legend particularly). Awesome games all around though.

I'm with the preference for faster play too. I tend to play Arkham with my gf where we each take 2 investigators. Despite us getting familiar with the mechanics and rarely having to pause and look up rules, the game is still agonizingly slow. I love the theme but we tend to peter out at the 90-120 minute mark.

I'm definitely going to look into Defenders of the Realm

Like has been said, a lot of co-op games where everyone is always on the same side lend themselves to being solo games where other people help move the pieces. Some co-ops, like Shadows Over Camelot or Battlestar Galactica, get around that by introducing the hidden traitor element. By planting the idea that anyone might not be on your side, the leader role becomes much trickier to play.

One of my favorite co-ops gets around the leader thing by playing in real time and throwing so much at the players that there's no way for one person to run everything. It's called Space Alert.

It's tough to adequately explain, but I'll try. The story is that you're the crew for the USS Sitting Duck, and experimental semi-automated deep space exploration vessel. The ship is catapulted into the void, sits there for ten minutes while the automated systems gather info, and then jumps home. The crew's job is to keep the ship in one piece for those ten minutes. The crew's survival is of secondary importance.

The game is played in two phases, the 10 minute Action phase, and the Resolution phase. During the Action phase, a CD is played. At various times, the CD will announce that a threat of a certain type is coming from a certain direction. One player draws the top threat card from the appropriate deck and places it in the appropriate vector track. Players then plan out their movements Robo Rally style using face down cards, like move left, do an action, etc.

The ship is divided into sections, and each section has a thing to do. There are laser guns, power routing stations, internal security droids, and a main computer system that has to have the mouse wiggled every few minutes to keep the screensaver from turning on (seriously). The players' job is to work together to fend off threats as they appear. The problem is that everyone's planning their actions verbally, and many actions have to occur in a coordinated fashion. To impose some order, things are broken into "turns". So player 1 might move to the power room on turn 1, player 2 to a laser cannon. On turn 2, player 1 might route power to the laser cannon so player 2 can then shoot it. However, if either player screws up the timing (likely), or something else gets in their way (likelier), things go to hell. Complicating things is that the CD will sometimes call out a communication problem, and everyone has to stop talking for 15-20 seconds until it clears up.

After the ten minutes, and everyone hopefully has their turns all planned, you basically start resolving everything and see what really happened. Remember players 1 and 2 up there? Well, player 3 tried to use the same elevator that player 2 was using to get to the power room, so player 2 had to take the ladder, which delayed him a turn, so player 1's laser had no power, and just fizzled. Stuff like that happens constantly, and is hilarious.

It's basically like Pandemic and Robo Rally had a kid, fed him ten pounds of sugar, put him in a hamster ball, and let him loose in a mall. It's unadulterated chaos that frequently ends in failure, but a round only takes a half hour to play, so losing is pretty painless. Plus, between the different vector tracks, decks of cards, and available tracks on the CD, there's a ton of replayability, and there's even a PC program to randomly generate more audio tracks. Well worth trying out.

Chaz wrote:

One of my favorite co-ops gets around the leader thing by playing in real time and throwing so much at the players that there's no way for one person to run everything. It's called Space Alert.

I LOVE Space Alert! It's unfortunate that neither my wife nor any of my friends care for it. They HATE the time pressure (and only moderately tolerate it for Galaxy Trucker, and completely dispense with timing in other games like Wits and Wagers). They also DESPISE the against-the-odds success paradigm of games like it. I love it for many of the reasons you outline; time pressure is a great equalizer.

Whereas I might get frustrated with such long odds in other games, I find the chaos of games like GT and SA hilarious to the point of giggling maniacally like a school boy who hears a teacher say the word "penis."

I also love Galaxy Trucker for the very real possibility of taking an asteroid in the wrong place and having half of your carefully (or slapped-together) ship go flying off into space.

As with so many things in life, if the failure is spectacular enough, it ceases to be failure.

HedgeWizard wrote:

Sadly games like Arkham require WAY too much management to make for timely play, never mind Descent (Road to Legend particularly). Awesome games all around though.

I just picked up Descent a couple of weeks ago. Beautiful game, but definitely one you have to dedicate a good portion of a day to playing.

I just introduced my board gaming group to Through the Ages. It's pretty long (around 3-4 hours), and fairly complex looking. Once you get over all the bits and the rulebook you'll find that it is kind of like doing all of the management you handle in Civilization. It's the best civilization board game out there.

We're also fans of Dominion, though we've kind of retired it. I did get my hands on another card game that looks similar, but has a dungeon crawling theme to it: Thunderstone

Ive considered Thunderstone. I'm roughly familiar with the mechanics but I havent heard any interesting descriptions of gameplay. Is it fun? Is it just fine with 2 players? Does it take more than an hour?

polypusher wrote:

Ive considered Thunderstone. I'm roughly familiar with the mechanics but I havent heard any interesting descriptions of gameplay. Is it fun? Is it just fine with 2 players? Does it take more than an hour?

I enjoy Thunderstone quite a bit. Play time is probably around the hour range once you know how to play but your first few games are going to take longer, especially if you are playing with more people. I haven't played with two but I don't see why it wouldn't work well. Like Dominion, the set of cards used for the match are going to really impact the game's length. Some setups are simply going to take longer to work through than others, especially if you have a lot of tough monsters that come out early. There are even solo rules that look like a lot of fun but I haven't tried that out yet, either.

The mechanics are nearly identical to Dominion with you building your deck, first filling it with cards to get your engine going and at some point transitioning to cards that help you earn victory points. In Dominion you get those cards in the same way (using "buy" actions); in Thunderstone you go to the dungeon and wallop monsters. Thematically it is a lot of fun and I think it works to give a different feel than Dominion even though the actual mechanics are almost exactly the same. It also seems like you are a little less likely to have a hand with dead weight like Dominion. Instead you'll look and have to decide if your hand will be better served going to town to buy more stuff or going to the dungeon to try and kill monsters which earn you points.

I still enjoy both games. Dominion is much faster and easier to teach and learn while Thunderstone is more "fun" due to the theme. Oddly enough I've avoided expansions for Dominion because I really appreciate its simplicity and feel no need to add onto it whereas I'm excited for all the expansion possibilities for Thunderstone.

HedgeWizard wrote:

In my mind, Forbidden Island is a perfect 20 minute game to start or end the evening.

Can you go into a little more detail? I've often found towards the end of an evening everyone is up for playing another game, but we can't play another session of whatever just ended because it takes too long. A 20 minute palate cleanser sounds intriguing.

polypusher wrote:

Ive considered Thunderstone. I'm roughly familiar with the mechanics but I havent heard any interesting descriptions of gameplay. Is it fun? Is it just fine with 2 players? Does it take more than an hour?

Gazebo summed it up nicely, but I'll just add that there are 3 things that I like about Thunderstone above and beyond Dominion.

1) All cards have both an active use and a money value. Each turn you choose to either go into town (buy a card) or go to the dungeon (gain VPs and experience). If you go to town, your cards are basically just all money cards.
2) In Dominion all you do is buy cards. In Thunderstone, there's an additional system layered on top (fighting monsters), so the cards end up being more interesting mechanically and thematically.
3) RPG-lite!

1dgaf recommended me Puzzle Strike, which is similar in that it's basically just Dominion plus a new system on top. I'll give a report once I get it and it hits the table.

A big theme at GenCon this year was hidden movement. Just a heads up.