What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

jpat wrote: For FANG (F&G), I've never played the in-box rules and only used the "complete" rules on BGG.

boardgamegeek.com/filepage/79862/complet...ok-fortune-and-glory

I don't remember the exact terminology, but the gist is that this rulebook focuses on either a competitive or a cooperative game always against a Vile Organization. (I think the base-game competitive rules don't necessarily do that.) It's good work, as a fan-made manual, with some additional FAQ-type additions integrated along with the rules for the expansions, which is handy.

It's not much different to the proper rules, just phrased probably in a better sequence of play. The proper rules do mention the team game and other variants (pages 26&27), I have no problems using it. The guy who compiled the 'complete' rules just likes to blow his own trumpet

jpat wrote: About the only thing I've played recently is Eclipse 2e. I quite liked the first edition, though I didn't play it enough to justify getting the second edition, which ... I did anyway. I can't really argue in good faith that it's so much better that one should upgrade, but there are so many quality-of-life improvements, especially in terms of organization, that it's not the worst money I've spent.

These are the deep insights into this hobby that i come to this site for. They should print this as a review on the box for the next print run.

First game of Bios: Megafauna. I played all the rules correctly (that rulebook... *shudder*) against the solitaire two-tusker and had an awful experience. I never had more than two animals on the board for the first 3/4 of the game because I only had access to 'P' DNA - which was not helpful in the slightest - and I spent the entire Cretaceous fenced into the bottom two habitats on the board because they were surrounded by sea biomes. I was able to branch out a bit towards the very end of the game, but ultimately the AI won every scoring round and absolutely crushed me.

There weren't too many decisions to make, much less meaningful ones. It feels like I just sat down and ran the AI for an hour. Maybe it was bad luck with the cards and starting biomes or whatever and I should give it a second shot. I still have a handful of unplayed games, though, and I'd rather try any of them than play this again.

I flirted with B:M some time back, had a run of two player games with my son and a couple of three player along the way. In my view it really needs maximum player count because you want a crowded board to simulate competition between species. Otherwise it’s just an exercise in collecting cubes and racing to three emotions. Sold it a while back because I was never going to get enough interested players together at the same time and it otherwise just isn’t interesting to play. I do admire the bigger picture climate shifts and how species adapt or suffer as a result though.

First or 2nd edition?

I have first and yeah it needs a lot of players to be gamey. Otherwise it's like some depressing comment on abject survival with no agency. I'd get rid of mine in a heartbeat only my son likes the dinomeeples.

From the description, it sounds like the first edition. The second was quite fun last time I played it.

Yesterday a friend hosted his 13th annual (except for one COVID miss last year) winter games marathon. 8 players, 2 tables, and plenty of games interrupted only by a big pot of chili for lunch and Chinese for dinner.

I think just about everyone got at least 1 of their top picks into the rotation, though I didn't keep tabs on what all happened at the other table. Things I did play:

Time of Crisis
Mountain Goats (bit of a steep dropoff there)
Incan Gold (twice)
The Red Cathedral (dice, rondel, gather resources, build shit, area majority, ticking a lot of Eurogame erogenous zones in this one)
Dune Imperium

Things went a solid 12 hours end to end, and even though nothing was very heavy, I was positively fried when we wrapped up. There was a time when I think we'd all have plowed on to midnight or beyond.

How was the time of crisis game? I never heard if the expansion was any good.

Gary Sax wrote: How was the time of crisis game? I never heard if the expansion was any good.

I don't think I know enough to draw any conclusions yet. For whatever reason I was the only one who racked up any Emperor turns, and 2 of the other players were sort of getting the system down but not really using its full potential to be aggressive against me. The 4th player became a Pretender and racked up huge Legacy from a western empire, and with only Italia and one other province I wasn't getting powerful enough cards into my deck to counter him. He won handily without ever being Emperor.

After quite a long time, I got out Core Space again, re-read the rule book, set up one of the later campaign missions but in single mission mode, and jumped in solo.

Things clicked pretty well, but they sure didn't GO well. One of my crew got killed literally on the first turn, and it wasn't terribly long before I was down to just the captain. There was not only a Live One, but an Assassin out for them as well, and they went down swinging. At one point they had a single chance to kill the Live One. This would have required a 1/6 chance on the blue die to get that double hit. It did not happen.

I'm not saying I am some expert player, because I definitely am not. But this game seems VERY difficult. Most weapons simply don't do enough damage to penetrate the more dangerous Purges' armor. Still, fun was had, and I'm looking forward to the new KS being delivered.... in January?

Killing a Live One is very difficult. There are a few weapons that roll 3 dice. That's not enough though, you need to use skills well. There are some really strong skills that add dice. You can also hack Purge or do other things to mess with them.

JoelCFC25 wrote: Time of Crisis
Mountain Goats (bit of a steep dropoff there)

I see what you did there...

hotseatgames wrote: I'm not saying I am some expert player, because I definitely am not. But this game seems VERY difficult. Most weapons simply don't do enough damage to penetrate the more dangerous Purges' armor. Still, fun was had, and I'm looking forward to the new KS being delivered.... in January?

I have no idea where the space is going to come from on my shelves. Need to dump some toads probably.

It was a wargame weekend in the Dive household.

Four plays of Fury at Midway, a quick and deadly game of out-guessing the other guy. Getting there first-est with the most-est (and luckiest) is the key in this version of carrier warfare and, as in real life, it was a tough run for the Japanese. Three US victories out of four, with the sole Japanese victory also the sole play where the Kido Butai survived to the second day of the battle. It's a brutal, beer-and-pretzels treatment, lots of fun as a game, but pretty sobering to think of all the sailors and aircrew that ended up far past recreational depths forever.

Keeping to the Japanese theme, Midway was followed by Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan. It's a beautiful game, and there's so much tension from hidden blocks and battle impact determined limited by your hand of cards. Somehow, though, we were slow to play this time, and each decision seemed to be choosing the least awful of multiple bad options. Glad we played, but it was a bit of a slog, and the pain to pleasure ratio was higher than in previous plays. Maybe we were tired from Midway.

The next day we tried a two-player learning game of Dune: Conquest and Conquest. I agree that's a better name. It's a quick and simple game, and it's obvious that it's meant for the full four players. Our random draw came up Fremen v. Atreides, and at the end of five turns tied at two strongholds each, the Fremen took the game with an overwhelming 26-to-1 lead in spice. I think my play as Duke Leto was, um, less than optimal. We had a good time, and we're definitely looking forward to a four-player game.

Brief pre-holiday gathering at a friend’s place.

TINY EPIC TACTICS: My buddy’s son won pretty handily. “Tiny” refers to the shelf space, “epic” is the rules explanation time. These are not terribly light games, even if their form factor and art direction seem to indicate otherwise. 20 minutes rules overview, 40 minute game. This one is over quickly if you don’t aggressively engage. It’s possible to retreat to the “get points” parts of the map and sit. We had some good exchanges at the end though.

JUST ONE. This continues to be a masterpiece. A perfect party game for gamers and non-gamers alike. Like many party games, you are playing the other people. Unlike many, you are literally playing everyone at the table. What clue is best for the current guesser? And is it likely to be chosen by someone else at the table? Ultimately a game about your relationships with the people you’re playing with, stripped of all pretense and cruft.