The Big Board-Gaming Catch-All

My overall December/Christmas haul is:

Game of Thrones 2nd Edition (owned & played 1st edition a ton)
Expansion to Mansions of Madness
Star Trek: Fleet Captains
Chaos in the Old World

Yeah, I've been eyeing CitOW for a long time and finally pulled trigger. Unfortunately I am aware of the production/design problems with Alchemy and am very dismayed. But I have confidence that FFG will make the owners whole, and at worst, I can make it work with my kids wherein I tend to play a much more narrative style MoM game.

I'm not aware of any problems with AGOT 2nd edition, beyond some of the boards being cut improperly (which thankfully mine doesn't suffer from). I know people have argued about starting positions and X House is easier to play in 3, 4, 5 player games, but those arguments have been circling since 1st edition. My group has always been good at playing the game very aggressively which mitigates some of the fears or concerns that some are voicing.

I got Lasherthecat Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer and I got us Claustrophobia. My lovely wife will now parade around with the prizes.

Ascension: Chronicle of the God Slayer - with thanks to Homelessgiant for showing my wife how it is played at Penguincon 2011.

and

Claustrophobia. Posters on this thread and Bill Abner at Gameshark and No High Scores have both told me how it is a great, two-player romp that takes under an hour to play. Cannot wait to try it.

So I played Memoire 44 today for the first time and just thougth I'd post that if anyone is thinking about playing a strategic wargame for the first time this may be perfect. Certainly it was for me and my son, who sometimes loses interest easily. The mechanics are simple (thanks for the recommendations one page earlier on next logical steps) and the games are relatively short. I am very eager to play more.

I picked up Ticket to Ride for my 11 year old for Christmas. She quite enjoyed it when we gave it a run through Christmas day. Probably the first game in a while that I've enjoyed as well.

Now I just need to get her to play Game of Thrones with me.

One thing to keep in mind is that LotR can be played with 2 players controlling 2 hobbits each though. Not sure if that will go over well with your wife or not but my wife and I have found that to be a good solution for co-op games that play better with more players.

Another option to consider is the LotR LCG. I just got it for Christmas and haven't played it yet but if card games are your thing it could be a good alternative to LotR since it is co-op as well.

As mentioned earlier, I bought Ticket to Ride and 7 Wonders for my family for Christmas.

We tried Ticket to Ride yesterday with 5 players (myself, my wife, my 2 older kids, and my youngest co-playing with my mom); there was a bit of a struggle to get going, as far as learning and explaining rules, but about halfway through we were pretty much rolling right along. There were a few sore moments at the end when doing the final score tally, partly because we didn't know exactly what we were doing at the beginning, and we all held onto the 3 initial tickets -- even if they weren't obtainable within 1 game.

We played 7 Wonders today, with 4 players (myself, my 2 older kids, and my mom). I had some serious concerns about this one, given that it's rated 13+ and my middle daughter just turned 9... but we managed it. This one again there was a struggle to get off the ground -- the cards were a bit confusing at first to learn all at once, so we just focused on the bare minimums (these icons here mean you have to pay resources to put the card into play; and these icons here mean that's what you get by playing the card). And around the 3rd round of age 2 we really got into the swing of things and had figured most things out (we think). I'm still not sure what all the extra cards are used for (1 card for each Wonder, and then a few other cards that look like they're used to separate ages, or something?).

All in all, I think it was pretty successful! And now that we know more or less how to play these, I'm hoping we'll be able to rip through a few more games sometime soon.

Alright, so some of my thoughts on the Halo Interactive Strategy Board Game:

I looked up a couple reviews, and it seems there wasn't something wrong with me and my cousin after all. The rule book is very simplified, to the point that it's actually a bit unclear and ambiguous under certain conditions. It is very easy to play this game wrong, especially since you can never be too sure if you're playing it right.

The idea is you take the modular pieces of the board, place them together in a map and then complete the objectives. You can either play Slayer, Capture-the-Flag or "Campaigns", with one player as the UNSC Marines and the other as the Covenant. There are three versions of the rules that change the manner of the game, each titled Normal, Heroic and Legendary. I can understand their attempts to throw in references to the video game, but in the Legendary rules should have been the default rule set with the "Normal" rules being a shorter skirmish mode. Basically, Heroic and Legendary add rules for increased weapon range for heights, and on Legendary everyone has an "energy" value that basically means they can lose X number of fights before dying.

It should be noted that the "Slayer" map seems to require more pieces than the game actually comes with, while all the other maps seem to use everything that's in the box.

My cousin and I started with Heroic rules and played one of the campaigns with a sort of King-of-the-Hill objective. Before we even began there were problems.

The booklet says to take the Halo and Weapon tokens and take turns spreading them across the map. There are two problems here. The first is the Halo and Weapon tokens are the same physical object. On one side, it says Halo. On the other, it says Weapon. The game provides no indication as to how many Halo or Weapon tokens should be placed, or if it is simply up to the whim of the player. The second problem is the game provides no rules as to where these items can be placed. As a result, a player can simply drop weapons or Halo tokens right in front of where their pieces start, allowing them to get better equipment right from the start. There are no rules saying a token must be placed X number of spaces from the starting area, and X number of spaces away from another token.

There aren't any rules regarding the starting areas, either. My cousin assumed that you don't count the movement range until after leaving the starting area, so we simply started that way. This is a minor point, however.

The real trouble was in how turns were played out. A piece can only move or attack on its turn, but it cannot do both. As a result, we reached a problem where one player would move into range of their opponent, and then they'd get shot at and, usually, die. While this wasn't always the case, and while on Legendary having energy would keep pieces in play longer, it always gives advantage to the player that doesn't have to move. After I lost half my team without even being able to make any progress, we started over.

It worked a lot better when a turn was moving someone's entire team at a time rather than just one piece. It allowed for more action and progress. However, it still didn't feel right. Part of this is because the map we chose wasn't very balanced (the UNSC has easier access to a teleporter, thus getting to a higher level and increased range faster than the Covenant). The other is simply because the player whose turn is first still gets the advantage, as the opposing player will probably have to take a turn getting into range and thus becoming vulnerable to enemy fire.

The dice were a bit problematic as well. Each D6 has three UNSC symbols and three Covenant symbols, and the instructions read that the team with the most corresponding symbols wins.

This makes absolutely no sense when you take into account each weapon has a different strength value. All that matters is how many symbols total favor one side or the other. So if you have seven dice versus three, if six of those seven dice are for your opponent, you lose. There's no real advantage to having more dice. The odds are still 50/50 that one player wins and the other loses. You just have more dice.

That is, unless the directions are worded poorly. The alternative wouldn't make any sense, though. If one player has four dice to roll that come up, say, Covenant, and he is playing Covenant, and the UNSC has seven dice to roll with five coming up UNSC and two Covenant. Let's assume that victory is determined not by both symbols combined, but just for your side. Who wins? Would UNSC have to have three UNSC symbols to lose against four Covenant? Are you simply adding how many symbols of your kind there are versus theirs?

The major problem with this game is that the instructions are very simple and basic, and one simple test game would have told the developers, B1, that they needed to write some expanded rules with greater detail. It feels like a seriously amateur effort, and I don't know how anyone could really know how to truly play the game. I feel like I should go back, reread my Mage Knight Dungeons rules, and see if I can apply some of those rules to this new game.

That, or buy some Halo heroclix and just use the terrain for that.

So I got Ticket to Ride: Marklin and Stronghold this Christmas.

TtR: Marklin was a big hit with all the family, although we introduced the passenger rules only after a few run throughs without them.

Stronghold was a beast, with my brother and I foolishly attempting to learn and play at 01:30 am after all day drinking. Suffice to say we managed one confusing turn and called it a night. The manual for this game is not very clear about some things, but after reading both Invader and Defender through again I thought I had a handle on it. Then I went onto BGG and found a great rules summary PDF for each of the roles that makes way more sense than the manual. So now my brother and I are looking forward to trying again in the new year. I love all the dobbers that Stronghold comes with!

Just put up a review of the Gears board game. Someone feel free to tell me I was doing it wrong, but to be honest there are better ways to spend my dollar and my time. About the rules cheat sheets and such: it shouldn't be that hard.

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/gears...

I am guessing that you are the same Natus from BGG?

Rules, rules. I mean, sure, maybe I should have read the Dominion rules more carefully when I started playing it months ago and maybe using all the cards from the original set plus all the Prosperity cards made for a very long game, but hey, it's not like I noticed today you're only supposed to use 10 different kingdom cards total rather than the 40 or so that were out for our very fun multi-hour game.

I think I like my version better.

You were doing it wrong

I've played the game a few times and just picked up a copy myself. It's not Gears of War turned into a board game as much as it's a cooperative dungeon crawler with a Gears of War theme. It has a lot in common with other cooperative crawlers like Warhammer Quest, the recent D&D games, etc.

My favorite mechanic is hand management, with your hand representing your health, actions you can take on your turn and reactions you take on the enemy's turn. I like that. I also like the "area" based movement (similar to Mansions of Madness); square grids always have some issues and feel so rigid, but moving from area to area works really well. Having played a few different scenarios I also like that they play very differently and require different tactics.

I really only have two complaints from my few plays. First, the game can take a long time, probably to the point of outstaying its welcome based on how into it your friends are. Second, there's not much loot. Yeah, that makes sense given the Gears of War theme, but I'm in it for the dungeon crawleriness and miss having fun loot to pick up.

I think if you enjoy games like Wrath of Ashardalon and Castle Ravenloft but want something that gives you more interesting decisions to make each turn (which leads to a longer play time), Gears of War is a good next step. I do think that increased complexity is going to be a turnoff for many, though. I love me some Fantasy Flight games so it's right up my alley.