The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

Jow wrote:

A friend gave me his copy of this as he wasn't a big fan. I want to like it more than I do but I'm with ya, the downtime is a killer. Blood Rage has recently set the bar for negligible downtime games for me and has made it really hard getting a lot of these clunkier designs to the table.

I might have to break down and get a copy of Blood Rage at some point. I've played it once, and liked it well enough, but that game was definitely colored by the fact that I was playing my first game with a group of people who were much more experienced with it. In fact, this happened in the Runewars game too. I hate getting myself into that situation. It's not just a lack of understanding, it almost feels like there's another level of the game going on that I'm completely unaware of. There are also certain decisions that you can't make well without some familiarity with the game - like how to value certain resources. Early in the Runewars game I bid 4 influence to get a dragon rune, and nobody else in the game bid more than 1. Bad decision on my part? I have no idea. Blood Rage at least had a much simpler battle resolution, and I remember being engaged nearly the entire time. I'll at least be looking to play that again at some point, Runewars not so much.

Jow wrote:

Played Fury of Dracula again over the weekend, with me as (all four) hunters and my buddy as Dracula, both first times for us. The game still feels off to me at times: it's harrowing and interesting when the hunters get on the trail, engage in combat, and generally get to use their stuff but when you're off the trail for any length of time the (move)-(supply/rest/ticket) cycle gets pretty dull.

Fury is weird in that the game is most fun when the hunters are right on Dracula's trail, for both sides. It's frustrating for the hunters when they can't pick up Dracula's trail, and if the Dracula player is in a completely different section of the map it's actually kind of boring for them as well. I just picture these hunters scouring western Europe while Dracula is strolling around the eastern side of the map, and starts thinking to himself "Look, this is embarrassing. I mean, if you're going to hunt me, at least make a show of it. You are so cold right now."

My son and I played a 2-player game of Archipelago yesterday afternoon, it's one of the games on our "10x10" attempt list for the year. It's another game I really want to like and some parts of it are really interesting, but I keep stumbling over the absolutely baffling aspects of it. I've played it probably 4 or 5 times and I still don't understand the whole "engaged/not engaged" aspect. Using buildings is weird. And the game length has always been way longer for us than the projected times. We've only ever played short games which are supposed to be 30 minutes with 2 players, but after 30 minutes we've usually barely gotten started.

"Boudreaux wrote:

My son and I played a 2-player game of Archipelago yesterday afternoon, it's one of the games on our "10x10" attempt list for the year. It's another game I really want to like and some parts of it are really interesting, but I keep stumbling over the absolutely baffling aspects of it. I've played it probably 4 or 5 times and I still don't understand the whole "engaged/not engaged" aspect. Using buildings is weird. And the game length has always been way longer for us than the projected times. We've only ever played short games which are supposed to be 30 minutes with 2 players, but after 30 minutes we've usually barely gotten started.

Archipelago is a fantastic and fascinating game, but the rules are certainly a bit of mess in some places.
Our group eventually kind of memorized all the engaged v non-engaged stuff after a handful of games, but we did play it twice a night for a few weeks which helped.

This BGG post may be useful: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/948833/what-you-might-be-doing-wrong-summary-most-common

I think I only played 2p once or twice, and it felt a little odd. The tension of a potential Separatist is gone, and certainly with the short game it would suddenly just end on turn 3 when someone accidentally hit the other persons goal.

Demyx wrote:

Honestly not, if you're experienced with the game you can win almost every time. Sometimes you do get pretty well screwed but it's rare compared to other co-ops we own.

I'm talking the physical board game, the iOS version is harder.

Of course if it's not up your alley that's fine, but it really isn't the kind of game where you routinely get dunked on from the offset.

I find with the Gates of Arkham expansion, it's a hell of a lot harder. Base game is pretty consistently on the easier side of things, I agree. The expansions definitely enhance it though.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Pandemic. Cthulhu.

Well, I know I'm buying at least one thing at GenCon now.

J.C. wrote:
Demyx wrote:

Honestly not, if you're experienced with the game you can win almost every time. Sometimes you do get pretty well screwed but it's rare compared to other co-ops we own.

I'm talking the physical board game, the iOS version is harder.

Of course if it's not up your alley that's fine, but it really isn't the kind of game where you routinely get dunked on from the offset.

I find with the Gates of Arkham expansion, it's a hell of a lot harder. Base game is pretty consistently on the easier side of things, I agree. The expansions definitely enhance it though.

We've only played with the Gates expansion once, which is something we'll have to remedy because I really liked it. It definitely does make the game harder though, but I didn't think it was harder in an unfair way.

Demyx wrote:

We've only played with the Gates expansion once, which is something we'll have to remedy because I really liked it. It definitely does make the game harder though, but I didn't think it was harder in an unfair way.

For sure. I don't think Elder Sign is really unfair. I mean, sure you can get a bad draw and have the odds stacked against you, or bad rolls, but that just comes down to chance. There are plenty of ways to mitigate bad rolls and increase your chances of success. Honestly, the game isn't that interesting in the base game because it doesn't quite throw enough at you that you can't recover pretty easily (horrible rolls notwithstanding).

Base version is pretty imbalanced anyways because the vanilla lobby allows for directly buying elder signs with bounties. Once you add in the Unseen Forces expansion (which revises the lobby significantly) it's a bit more interesting.

Torq wrote:

This BGG post may be useful: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/948833/what-you-might-be-doing-wrong-summary-most-common

I think I only played 2p once or twice, and it felt a little odd. The tension of a potential Separatist is gone, and certainly with the short game it would suddenly just end on turn 3 when someone accidentally hit the other persons goal.

I read that post, it didn't help. Mostly I can't get any clear answer on how it works when workers are engaged with buildings. If workers harvest, they're engaged. That's simple. If a worker builds a building, it's engaged. Also simple. It's occupying/using the buildings that trips me up. The only sentence in the rules is something like "workers may build/occupy/operate a building in the same round" which is really confusing. If I build a port, that worker is engaged building a port. I think I can then use that port to do a transaction without using an Action Disc. Okay, I get that. After the action round is over and you progress onto the Disengagement phase, do workers on buildings come off? Can I leave workers on a building so it's continually occupied? If I want to move a worker off of a building, can I only do that with a Migration action? If I use a building (i.e. port/market), does a worker on it become engaged? It also bugs me that it appears a worker can occupy a building but not be engaged, or occupy a building and be engaged (from using the building? I don't know), but there's no way to differentiate between those two. You can't lay the meeple on its side, because that means it's a rebel. It's like there's this additional condition that the designer mandated, but there's no way to denote it on the board.

I read a post from the designer that talked about 2 players, and how it was one of his favorite ways to play because the rebels become this "half player" that factors into the game. There is room for negotiation and trade between the 2 players in order to work together to keep the rebel count at bay, but also room for backstabbing and betrayal, even without the pacifist/separatist options. The biggest issue I've seen with 2 players is that is seems like every game is basically a tie, but that might be due to inexperience and not anticipating win/scoring conditions.

I love the exploring, resources/building, and market aspects of the game. The win conditions and threat of rebelling are cool too. There's just this little bit of ambiguity that keeps showing up that's maddening.

Boudreaux wrote:

I might have to break down and get a copy of Blood Rage at some point. I've played it once, and liked it well enough, but that game was definitely colored by the fact that I was playing my first game with a group of people who were much more experienced with it. In fact, this happened in the Runewars game too. I hate getting myself into that situation. It's not just a lack of understanding, it almost feels like there's another level of the game going on that I'm completely unaware of. There are also certain decisions that you can't make well without some familiarity with the game - like how to value certain resources. Early in the Runewars game I bid 4 influence to get a dragon rune, and nobody else in the game bid more than 1. Bad decision on my part? I have no idea. Blood Rage at least had a much simpler battle resolution, and I remember being engaged nearly the entire time. I'll at least be looking to play that again at some point, Runewars not so much.

Yeah, I won a game of Blood Rage over the weekend vs. two new players and a guy who only had one game under his belt and felt a bit bad about it during because with 5-6 plays in now I have much better card knowledge. When I'm teaching the game I try to mitigate that by giving them a brief explanation of the different card flavors (Loki, Tyr, etc) warning them about the Loki cards and not allowing one player to get them all, and give them additional info about what they might see without overwhelming them with data. They had a blast so I'm happy.

Boudreaux wrote:

Fury is weird in that the game is most fun when the hunters are right on Dracula's trail, for both sides. It's frustrating for the hunters when they can't pick up Dracula's trail, and if the Dracula player is in a completely different section of the map it's actually kind of boring for them as well. I just picture these hunters scouring western Europe while Dracula is strolling around the eastern side of the map, and starts thinking to himself "Look, this is embarrassing. I mean, if you're going to hunt me, at least make a show of it. You are so cold right now."

Yep, it's an odd duck that way, almost like you're playing different games depending on if you're on the trail or not. Having not played the first two editions it makes me wonder: did they both have that same feel?

Another side effect of that hot/cold thing is that it can cause a lot of Dracula's machinations to go completely under the radar. My first game as Dracula I was really thoughtful about laying traps and planning against the hunters assuming they were going to find my trail, going really light on vampires early, only to have them fail to find me for a day and a half while all of my stuff slid off the end of the board to little effect.

tanstaafl wrote:

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Pandemic. Cthulhu.

Well, I know I'm buying at least one thing at GenCon now.

Pandemic: it's the new Munchkin.

Jow wrote:

Yep, it's an odd duck that way, almost like you're playing different games depending on if you're on the trail or not. Having not played the first two editions it makes me wonder: did they both have that same feel?

2nd edition was exactly the same. It's one of the reasons I always felt like the game was set up to be less about searching for Dracula and more about chasing him. The event deck helped the hunters find Dracula's trail, and playing Dracula was the most fun when you were just a step or two ahead of the hunters, and it became a real battle of wits and outmaneuvering. If those mechanisms weren't working and the hunters weren't even close, it was boring. Then the Dracula game became more about cycling through encounters to get vampires to mature for points.

If you really like the chase aspect of Fury of Dracula, it's hard not to recommend the current Ravensburger edition of Scotland Yard. It takes that hidden movement/chase mechanic and distills it down to the essence. There's no combat, no points or encounters or any of that fluff - it's just the chase. You're caught, and you lose. Survive for X number of turns, and you win. It's much harder than Fury, just because there's no room for error, but man what a fun and tense game.

Boudreaux wrote:

I read that post, it didn't help. Mostly I can't get any clear answer on how it works when workers are engaged with buildings. If workers harvest, they're engaged. That's simple. If a worker builds a building, it's engaged. Also simple. It's occupying/using the buildings that trips me up. The only sentence in the rules is something like "workers may build/occupy/operate a building in the same round" which is really confusing.

1. If I build a port, that worker is engaged building a port. I think I can then use that port to do a transaction without using an Action Disc.
2. After the action round is over and you progress onto the Disengagement phase, do workers on buildings come off?
3. Can I leave workers on a building so it's continually occupied?
4. If I want to move a worker off of a building, can I only do that with a Migration action?
5. If I use a building (i.e. port/market), does a worker on it become engaged?
6.It also bugs me that it appears a worker can occupy a building but not be engaged, or occupy a building and be engaged (from using the building? I don't know), but there's no way to differentiate between those two. You can't lay the meeple on its side, because that means it's a rebel. It's like there's this additional condition that the designer mandated, but there's no way to denote it on the board.

As far as I remember:

1. Correct. After completing a building you can use it once for free
2. Yes, kind of. They become disengaged, but you can leave them in the building.
3. You can leave workers on buildings. This means that they are occupied and can't be occupied by another meeple.
4. If a worker is non-engaged but occupying a building, you can still use them to take any other action on the tile. You could send them harvesting for example, or use a Migration action to move them out of the tile.
5. Yes. If you have a non-engaged meeple occupying a port/market and you take an action to use a building, you engage the meeple and perform the trade.
6. This is the key piece, identifying an engaged vs non-engaged meeple when occupying. What we used to do was move them so they had 1 foot in the building and 1 off it to show they were non-engaged. Then when you use them, nove them to be fully standing on the building tile. This partially on/off gave them a bit of a tilt that made them a bit easier to see compared to meeples standing level.

About two or three times a year, we get a group together to brave Arkham Horror. Yeah, it's a weekend killer, and yeah, Eldritch does some things smoother, but I'm a big fan of Arkham. Plus I already own the game and many in my group already know how to play it.

I was playing Kate, the scientist, whose ability is that when a gate or a monster opens in your location, it just...doesn't. Someone else got an encounter that let her look at the top three mythos cards and replace them in any order. So I got to spend two turns sitting in the Historical Society, stopping a gate from opening two turns in a row. Felt pretty great.

In the end we took down Nyarlothotep by getting all the gates closed at once (and yes, we had the requisite number of unspent trophies.)

Chaz wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Pandemic. Cthulhu.

Well, I know I'm buying at least one thing at GenCon now.

Pandemic: it's the new Munchkin.

Except Pandemic is good

(Just kidding, I like Munchkin too, but couldn't resist)

I'm surprised it's apparently not a Legacy game -- I don't see anything in there about it being legacy.

Boudreaux wrote:

If you really like the chase aspect of Fury of Dracula, it's hard not to recommend the current Ravensburger edition of Scotland Yard. It takes that hidden movement/chase mechanic and distills it down to the essence. There's no combat, no points or encounters or any of that fluff - it's just the chase. You're caught, and you lose. Survive for X number of turns, and you win. It's much harder than Fury, just because there's no room for error, but man what a fun and tense game.

Have you played Spectre Ops? Despite lack of depth compared to other hunt and capture/kill games I like it a lot because that game IS the chase. You have item cards to assist in the chase or modify it in some way, but essentially it's a chase game where the chased is on a timer.

In Dracula, the chase is different. It's more puzzle-y/strategic as the hunters because of the road/railway mechanics and more nuanced for Dracula because of the opportunity to lay traps, use power cards, etc. I like that, but because there's so much more NOT happening when the trail is cold it feels like I'm only playing half the game. It's not much fun having hands full of items that you've spent many Supply actions cycling and refining only to barely use them. In the 2 2/3 days or so of gametime in the game I mentioned earlier today I think we had two regular vampire combats (one in which I killed the vamp and the other where I escaped because I had bigger fish to fry) and three combats with Dracula himself. As a proportion that made up a small fraction of the total time we spent playing and it felt like all those cards were just sitting in my hands for most of the game.

In other words, so far I feel like the chase has more depth than Spectre Ops but is still somehow less satisfying because the rest of the game exists. I'm hoping that changes with more plays with people that understand the game.

Torq wrote:

6. This is the key piece, identifying an engaged vs non-engaged meeple when occupying. What we used to do was move them so they had 1 foot in the building and 1 off it to show they were non-engaged. Then when you use them, nove them to be fully standing on the building tile. This partially on/off gave them a bit of a tilt that made them a bit easier to see compared to meeples standing level.

Thanks, your post clarifies things a bit. I think if I'd sat and thought about these without reading the rules I could have eventually come up with the right approach, but there are too many ambiguities in the rulebook that just led to more questions. This whole engaged/non-engaged/rebel thing is still annoying. I feel like the game needs something else to denote engaged workers, like a little chit. Or a hat. A "get-to-work" meeple hat.

Jow wrote:

In other words, so far I feel like the chase has more depth than Spectre Ops but is still somehow less satisfying because the rest of the game exists. I'm hoping that changes with more plays with people that understand the game.

I never did get around to playing Specter Ops, but always wanted to. I think there's just enough room in Fury for bad luck to really hose the hunters, at least for awhile. Sometimes you just can't get a break trying to find the trail. There are ways to use the event deck to help, but new players sometimes overlook that. You often feel like you need to be moving, while sticking to a large city to draw event cards through supply can be more powerful and put you on the trail faster. On the flip side, there's enough room for events to really hose Dracula as well, so I guess it swings both ways.

Boudreaux wrote:

I never did get around to playing Specter Ops, but always wanted to. I think there's just enough room in Fury for bad luck to really hose the hunters, at least for awhile. Sometimes you just can't get a break trying to find the trail. There are ways to use the event deck to help, but new players sometimes overlook that. You often feel like you need to be moving, while sticking to a large city to draw event cards through supply can be more powerful and put you on the trail faster. On the flip side, there's enough room for events to really hose Dracula as well, so I guess it swings both ways.

Aye, i had a big chunk of that the last game. I had two "retrieve an ally from the discard and use its ability" cards just sitting in hunter hands for a good chunk of the game but finally drew an ally, Rufus something or other, whjich basically allows you to pick a city and if it's on the trail Dracula has to reveal the card. I got that card effect 3x as a result of those retrieve cards and eliminated 3 of 6 possible cities immediately, then had to go on the wild goose chase. before i realized he hadn't gone out to Europe at all. Pain in da arse.

Okay, I think my body is finally ready for my post-PAX write-up. This is all (surprisingly few in number) the Tabletop games I played:

Codenames - I already mentioned this game a few weeks ago; it's brilliant and everyone loves it. I probably played it 10+ times over the weekend. I'm not doing a 10x10, but if I were, I'd get to check this one off the list. Sad moments included me giving the hint "Correct!" in a chipper voice and my friends not seeing the words "gold" and "star" were right next to each other. I guess we're not ready for that level of play yet. Funny moments included Hemi's team losing when the only word they needed was "bill" and he intentionally declined to give the clue "me".

Race For The Galaxy - Bel taught me this card game that I've heard of for years. At first I thought it was insanely complicated, with a million symbols on it, but as the game went on I think I pretty much got it.

Blood Rage - I managed to find a guy from the Penny Arcade forums who was willing to bring his copy and teach my friends and I. It was pretty awesome! We got a little into role-playing the Viking aspect, with my friend taunting me for shunning battle in the beginning, and then me returning the favor later in the game when I had greatly superior forces. We had to play as teams to get everyone into the game, and I started referring to their Raven Clan team as the "sh*tbirds," which our host thought was hilarious. I can't wait to get my own copy!

Secret Hitler - I took a print and play copy of this to the con and finally got my friends to play it on Saturday. It was unanimously a hit with them, with one guy even saying he liked it better than Codenames. Many laughs were had, along with occasional gasps when the fascists were revealed. We also had a random passerby couple join us for some games; it turned out the guy had a print and play copy as well. This game plays so, so well, and I imagine we'll play it for years. Can't wait for my KS copy to arrive!

Cash and Guns - Not bad, and a game I was curious about, but I guess I didn't really see the "game" here. Seemed like a lot of random chance, but I imagine there's more to it.

We also had aborted attempts to play Coup and Epic, but neither ended up happening. All in all, a great weekend of gaming!

Taught my son to play Lewis and Clark last night and was reminded that it's actually a pretty decent half deck-building, half worker placement game with a side of interesting resource management. Add in the "sudden death" race mechanic and we had a lot of fun with it. I think it gets almost unmanageable with 4-5 players (lots of other players' tableaus to keep track of) but with only two it was fast and still very fun. I bought this after one play a couple of years ago and have barely played it since, mostly because my wife simply cannot grok this game for some reason. When you play cards, you play one card for the effect and a second card to "power" it, letting you use that effect from 1-3 times. This is somehow completely baffling to her. Was gratifying to see my son pick it up after only a couple of turns. He made a tight race of it but I was able to scoot ahead to Fort Clatsop a turn faster.

In my defense, I went into the rules to see if it was allowed and it wasn't explicitly permitted or denied, so I erred on the side of caution, since it was my first time as clue giver. My first name is Bill, so me-1 would've done it. I instead went with "monthly-1" and my team thought it had to be lunar...

Games I played at S&T and PAX South (besides my Codenames fail):

Dungeon Run - This one took about two hours to play. I enjoyed it a lot, but the "every man for himself" at the end is a little tough. This one seems to be ridiculously expensive online, so it might remain a PAX special for me.

Robo Rally - having helped my daughter with some of the robot program games on iOS, the one made a lot of sense to me. Errors were minimal, but I miscalculated when I would go, got bumped and then took multiple laser shots for a round or two. Needless to say I didn't win. PewPewRobo, the dealer, had a pretty clear run through... hmmm.

Tsuro - simple, elegant and a lot of fun. Grumpicus' daughter schooled us all. I'll probably get this one soon to play at the house with the family.

X-Wing - Thanks to PewPewRobo for being our rules lawyer. We did a 3 player (1 X-Wing and each of us had a TIE fighter). It was the basic, my first game, rules, but it built a good foundation and I'm looking forward to playing again. I also picked up a FO TIE, the Falcon and Slave 1 at the show. I also ordered the playmat from Fantasy Flight. I've gone down the rabbit hole a bit here.

King of Tokyo - Played this on Sunday with the family. We picked it up as a family gift on Christmas, but haven't sat down at home to play it yet. So, we took some time from our PAX and played a game. The kids knocked both parents out early and it came down to the last turn for my daughter and son duking it out.

King of New York - played this at the S&T. I hadn't played KoT yet, so the extra layer of complexity was a little lost on me. I was just trying to figure out what everything does and get a better handle on the risk/reward setup. I might get this in a year or two when the kids get older.

I guess I'm almost the ven diagram between Hemi and Fed for board games played at and around PAX South: Codenames, King of New York, Dungeon Run, Cash & Guns, Tsuro, Robo Rally, X-Wing (teaching) and--the odd-ball--Rampage! Not a bad list. We had a broad range of gamers, so the games skewed a little on the lighter side than my usual fare, but it was satisfying to hit the right balance for each group. I'm not the greatest on-the-spot teacher and the din in the game hall added a bit of challenge, but it was a great experience and I'd like to think I became a better game-teacher over the three-day weekend.

I'm sorry we couldn't get Cosmic Encounter to the table Fed, we'll have to do that next year. Glad you enjoyed RFTG with Bel though; I think that's probably my all-time favorite, even if the fully expanded version is a little top-heavy.

Wow, your all-time fave! That's high praise for a man with the incredible collection you and Bel have!

Thanks again for being so willing to teach Cosmic Encounter. The day will come!

Ever so slightly out of scope for this thread but I got GMT / Consim Games' Silent Victory in the mail and on the table yesterday- it's a solitaire wargame of commanding US subs in WWII. I got one patrol in- it's really frustrating to have torpedoes that don't work 2/3 of the time.

qaraq wrote:

Ever so slightly out of scope for this thread but I got GMT / Consim Games' Silent Victory in the mail and on the table yesterday- it's a solitaire wargame of commanding US subs in WWII. I got one patrol in- it's really frustrating to have torpedoes that don't work 2/3 of the time. :sad:

Unless that's a periscope pun I'm not getting, that's totally within the scope of the thread.

qaraq wrote:

Ever so slightly out of scope for this thread but I got GMT / Consim Games' Silent Victory in the mail and on the table yesterday- it's a solitaire wargame of commanding US subs in WWII. I got one patrol in- it's really frustrating to have torpedoes that don't work 2/3 of the time. :sad:

Is it that the torpedoes miss 2/3 of the time, or don't fire at all? Either way I can see that being a frustrating mechanic, it's just a much funnier visual the second way.

You place them, roll for hit, then for each hit roll a d6 for duds- until 8/42 the dud range is 1-4. Then 1-3 until 8/42, 1-2 until 1944, and just 1 in 44/45. Just about everything that could be wrong was wrong with US torps in 1942- ran too deep, magnetic exploders didn't work, backup contact exploders didn't work, and the brass didn't want to hear a word of this.

I've been rereading the book of the same name, and it's got to have been incredibly demoralizing to the crews risking their lives just to watch targets sail blissfully away.

I didn't get nearly as much game time at PAXS as I would have wanted, between work, baby, friends, family, and absolutely gorgeous weather, there wasn't much time left for games. Hopefully next time I can actually play with some Goodjers rather than awkwardly stopping by the table for 30 seconds. Anyway. A few games of note:

Got to watch a demo of Takat one day. It was one of the Tabletop Indie Showcase games, and it looks pretty interesting. Didn't actually get to play, but I'm a fan of games with simple rules and minimal setup. Looks like a very solid abstract puzzle game worth keeping an eye on.

I'm also a lover of all things lame, so when I saw Deck Building in the lending library, I had to give it a shot. This is a deck building card game wherein you build a deck. Like with wood, rails, and steps. It's two player only, but pretty quick and simple. Unfortunately I got too excited building my (card) deck and didn't actually build my (wood) deck, so I got hosed. I'll probably grab a copy of I see it at my local game store.

Probably my favorite game from PAXS was Red Flags. I'd never heard of it before but one of our friends randomly bought a copy at the con. It's one of those games in the same vein as Funemployed (which I haven't played but have heard a lot about). Basically one person is single, and the rest of you combine your white cards to come up with their dream date. Everyone goes around and introduces their suitors. But everyone also has red cards, which are the giant "buts" for these fictional dates. You play them on the player to your left's candidate. The single player then chooses the least awful date. I really enjoyed this game - even though it has a relatively small set of cards, I feel like it has a lot of replayability because it's not just going for shock laughs like Cards Against Humanity and the like. It's funny how people's actual dating experiences can change a relatively innocuous red flag into a total dealbreaker. Very funny and fun game.

We also played a fair bit of Superfight, which was just hilarious and ridiculous fun. I think it got more big laughs than Red Flags, but, to use an already overused adjective, it didn't seem as compelling. This game goes for absurdity, which I can see getting somewhat stale after multiple playthroughs when you've already seen all the cards.

I finally got to play my copy of T.I.M.E. Stories. (Asylum scenario)

My mind exploded how clever this game is. Basically it's adventure game like Myst or a Telltale Games. It shot up to my top 4 games of all time (which all of them are in flex for #1, which time I play a one it moves things around). I never played a game where 4 hours seem so short and exciting. I never played a game so long and be engage the whole time. Easily best gaming narrative I have ever played. Alpha gaming is none existent because you have perfect information of cards while others don't. One of the best art I have ever played in a game. The game has a lot of surprises... I wish I can say more but it would be spoiler.

The only downfall of game is rules question. Since each scenario has special unique rules. Know this going in we decided as a group just to decide on our own. The game is about the story, discovery, and the narrative. Not optimizing the game.

I highly recommend this game for any gamer that loves stories in their games. Perfect for role playing gamer to get into.

I can't wait to play the next case!

chixor7 wrote:

I'm also a lover of all things lame, so when I saw Deck Building in the lending library, I had to give it a shot. This is a deck building card game wherein you build a deck. Like with wood, rails, and steps. It's two player only, but pretty quick and simple. Unfortunately I got too excited building my (card) deck and didn't actually build my (wood) deck, so I got hosed. I'll probably grab a copy of I see it at my local game store.

Grab two copies, it expands it to a four player game. And yeah, you can't spend too much time on your card deck or your opponent will finish their actual deck. It's possible for a round to get quite lengthy, but it's more frequent that the round ends extremely quickly.