OO Boardgamers, what did you play this weekend?

[Boudreaux]

p.s. get your ass to the next Ocoton in November so we can all get a game in together. same goes to jow, smoove and the rest of you boardgamers.

When is the next Octocon, have you guys decided yet? I have no shortage of gaming opportunities here, but I'm intrigued by the idea of a boardgame weekend with some OOers and it'd be interesting to meet you guys. Chicago isn't too bad a drive up I55 from St. Louis.

[hepcat]

I believe we're shooting for Nov. 5th and 6th

[hentzau]

I enjoyed Ravenloft a great deal. I know Hentzau was getting annoyed with the two guys who kept coming over the table to add asides that they hated D&D 4th edition rules, or that the game of Ravenloft they just played at another table didn't impress them (Hent annoyed cracks me up...you can see the struggle to remain pleasant going on under his forced smile...but he handles himself better than I would if I just purchased a 65 dollar game and some jackass kept telling me it wasn't as fun as other games of its kind), but I honestly thought it was fun. .

Heh. Yeah, that one guy who came over with the comment of "Well, I'm glad to finally see that Wizards has finally given up and just turned 4E into the boardgame it really is" really cheezed me off. I normally just let that stuff roll off of me, but I was having such a good time playing Ravenloft that it just caught me off guard, and I reacted somewhat badly. I had hoped that you guys had missed that, but I guess my exasperated sigh and retort wasn't as subtle as I had thought.

[hepcat]

Hey, I would've handled it with less tact myself. I think the guy realized he was being an ass a few seconds after he uttered that statement, though. That wasn't the first time that guy's been a jerk to folks in the store, too.

[baelthazar]

Are you guys playing in the FLGS? There is a lot of hate against D&D right not, and many people are extolling Pathfinder - saying it is back to 3E basics (and by basics they mean annoying charts, Byzantine math, and obscure skills). I'm not really into it any more, so I'm not invested.

Castle Ravenloft seems fun to me because it is easy to solo, looks easy to teach, gives me a D&D-lite feel and doesn't take 8 hours like other Dungeon games. I would love to know what "other games" are better that that guy suggested. Descent isn't really a good comparison, as it is more a tactical game. Space Hulk is the same way (and it sucks). Maybe Claustrophobia or something like that? I haven't seen a huge selection of easy and quick to play dungeon delving games. I prefer CR to DungeonQuest so far, but DQ is fun for a laugh.

I'll have to think about Titan. I've also eyed Summoner Wars, but I don't really want to invest extra in a board and into more decks. I also have Cthulhu LCG that I can play and I'm reading the Game of Thrones books, so that might come first. I was eying the new Dominant Species game from GMT, but it seems VERY expensive and looks to be a tad "Caylus-level" in complexity.

I'm not sure the TI:3rd expansion will LOWER playtime, but it does seem to add some really neat stuff. Lots of "superfluous" stuff like Space Mines, Alien Artifacts, Race Specific Techs, and Facilities (you add value to planets with these) are crammed into it. The biggest addition is a new set of alternative Role cards (and they look very interesting), an alternative Imperial Role card (which might slow the game more than speed it), and the 4 new races - all of which are really cool and have very interesting powers. I'm not sure what we will add when we play, maybe just the new races, the new tiles, and the race techs. Possibly also the Imperial II role card - as the original Imperial role card was dodgy.

[Lorini]

Titan is one of the classic strategy games. That being said, it takes a long time to play and there is player elimination. It's a very very good game but you need to devote a lot of time to play it. I would not play it with more than 3.

[Boudreaux]

I've also eyed Summoner Wars, but I don't really want to invest extra in a board and into more decks. I also have Cthulhu LCG that I can play and I'm reading the Game of Thrones books, so that might come first.

Yeah, same boat. I've been hearing an awful lot of good things about Summoner Wars, but with Dominion, Innovation, and the Game of Thrones LCG I've pretty much got the card games covered for the moment. Hopefully I can play it soon, though. Even though that'll just make me want to buy it more.

[hepcat]

Are you guys playing in the FLGS? There is a lot of hate against D&D right not, and many people are extolling Pathfinder - saying it is back to 3E basics (and by basics they mean annoying charts, Byzantine math, and obscure skills). I'm not really into it any more, so I'm not invested.

We sometimes gather at Chicagoland Games. The two owners are just great guys who cater to the game crowd. They stay open past midnight on most nights to allow folks to finish games. Plus, they'll jump into games more often than not.

[baelthazar]

Titan is one of the classic strategy games. That being said, it takes a long time to play and there is player elimination. It's a very very good game but you need to devote a lot of time to play it. I would not play it with more than 3.

Looks like someone took me up on my offer to trade Viktory 2 for Titan. Viktory 2 was a fine game, but we just didn't play it enough.

[Chaosraven]

Played RoboRally (my daughter won) and LastNightOnEarth (radioactive grave dead scenario, added grave weapons to zombie players, added Survival Decks to heroes), where heroes won by blowing up the gas and killing the third hero along with meteorite (four dead heroes is a loss). Played EDH with three of the kids. Good weekend.

[Daveman]

I picked up Race for the Galaxy this weekend and so far I'm more puzzled than happy with the purchase. I always play a game or two against myself, just to make sure I "get" the game before introducing it to anyone else. I get that the card symbology has a certain elegance to it, but when I look at the cards and try and figure out what I want to play I still see a mess of heiroglyphics that make little sense. It took nearly the end of one game before I realized that one planet gave me -1 to settle, but only on brown planets. I spent an entire game exploring and didn't notice till the end I had something else in play that let me draw an extra card per explore, etc. Just a whole lot of little things that added up to a lot. But beyond that, I couldn't really "get" what I should have been doing overall. My gut instinct told me consuming/producing would be the way to go, but after a few games it looked more like I should be going for getting 12 planets/developments and ending things that way.

The worst part was trying to get my wife to play a real game with me. She's been a slow convert, but has enjoyed Carcassonne, Catan, and lately has come to love Torbago, Dominion and such... I hoped this would be an easy sell. She took one look at the cards and listened to me try and explain a little and politely asked if we could just play Dominion instead.

Any newbie advice, or pointers to some resources out there on the game?

[LordMortis]

Play against the computer and the rules will be clear quick enough

http://www.keldon.net/rftg/

Oh and what you should be doing should be dictated by your cards and what they other guys are doing. Sadly, that doesn't work so well against a fairly chaotic computer AI. Also by the time you pick up the third expansion the game gets very random. It becomes a lot more important to be lucky than anything else.

[Chaosraven]

Your wife has it right. Take RaceForMalarkey, stick it in a drawer, and play Dominion instead

[hepcat]

I actually like the game play in Race for the Galaxy but find it more trouble than it's worth to play due to the wonky heiroglyphics. I hope they rerelease it someday with descriptive text for each card's function on the card itself. They started doing it in the expansions, so I think they're aware the icons are a turn off for some folks.

[freelunch]

on Saturday I played Castle Ravenloft a couple of times with my two sons. we're all liking this game a lot. we also tried a four-army Summoner Wars battle in which I controlled The Elves and Vanguard factions and my boys played as Dwarves and Fallen. It was OK but I didn't really enjoy running two sides so I doubt we'll play it that way again.

on Sunday I taught my seven-year-old to play Thunderstone. he did really well - making good decisions throughout, though it was a lengthy process as I had to explain to him what his cards did until he could remember them all. He and I also played Wax, a neat little indie abstract card game and Zombie Dice, and I got a quick single round of Lord Of The Rings: The Confrontation in with my older son.

[hentzau]

I spent all afternoon Saturday playing Crokinole. With Scandinavians.

[Papa Smurph]

We played Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. This is a old game, but I was able to find a seller without any problems. With shipping it only cost me about $45. It has a "group play" mode where everyone works together to solve the mystery, so my wife, 10 year old daughter and I all played it that way.

The game works by have a "case book" where you read the case you will play. This gives you starting information. You then travel around 1880 London interviewing people and collecting clues. For instance, you might decide to visit the chief medical examiner to find out details about how the victim died. This is done via a "clue book" which has a paragraph or 3 for each location you might want to visit (for each case). Then, when you think you have it figured out, you use the "quiz book" to take a quiz and see how many answers you get right. Different questions are worth different points.

So, for our first game we did case 1, the case of the murdered munitions magnate. The text was very flavorful (maybe a bit too period as we got confused a couple of times by outdated expressions of speech). Over the course of two gaming sessions we must have visited some 30 locations and ended up deciding to somewhat guess the final answers. Therefore, we missed "who did it" and "why", but got a couple of other answers, for a total of 70 points (out of like 150). Then, the game tells us that Sherlock Holmes solved the case with only 4 clue points (what the game calls visits to locations)! It then explained how he figured it out with only 4 visits, and in typical Holmes style, there were lots of leaps of faith in his reasoning that could have gone badly for him but did not.

All in all, we enjoyed it quite a bit. This game has a lot of reading and thinking and no action so it's not for everyone, but if you like mysteries and puzzles it's great. Definitely a game we will be playing again. For those interested, the original game comes with 10 cases (this was just one), so although the cases have no real replay value there is quite a bit of gameplay here. We spent maybe 4 hours playing this one case. There are also several expansions (for additional cost, of course) that I have not tried.

[Chaz]

I finally (finally) got to play Battlestar Galactia. Highly amusing. I was Zarek with Baltar also in the game, but no Roslin, and I wasn't a cylon. I pretty quickly swiped the Presidency, which made everyone highly suspicious of me. Due to a skill check with a negative card that one of two other players had to have played, I knew one of them was a cylon, so brigged him via a crisis. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth and even more suspicion of me as a cylon.

Baltar eventually used his once ever to check my loyalty and declared me clean. By this point, we were past halfway, so nobody believed him, assuming he was a cylon too. We were sad when one of the cylons didn't realize that revealing was an action, so revealed his card on someone else's turn. Then we brigged him. Humans wound up losing because we didn't realize how important fuel was and ran dry on one of the last jumps.

Whole game is as good as advertised. Will totally play again.

[hepcat]

We played Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. This is a old game, but I was able to find a seller without any problems. With shipping it only cost me about $45. It has a "group play" mode where everyone works together to solve the mystery, so my wife, 10 year old daughter and I all played it that way.

I used to play this series to death in high school. Hands down one of my fondest game memories.

[Boudreaux]

Yeah BSG is awesome, wish I was able to play it more. In one of my recent games I was Adama, and I was a Cylon but had completely convinced all the humans that I was with them. Toward the end of the game the humans had a couple of lucky breaks and it looked like they might manage a win, but a couple of them had been brigged in an anti-Cylon witchhunt. Within about a turn and a half I managed to get all of the humans brigged, then reveal myself and skip off to the resurrection ship, leaving the Galactica empty except for a full brig. Then I dropped a Cylon armada on them. It was glorious.

Last week had a great game of Middle Earth Quest, as Sauron I had the quest of getting the Ringwraiths to the Shire, which I managed for the win. THe heroes had the mission of killing all my minions, which has to be one of the most difficult of the game, especially with only 2 heroes. Plus, one of them was the girl whose primary ability is combat avoidance. Kind of stacked against them, but still a fun game. Tonight we meet again and I'm hoping for a game of Carson City.

[El Guapo]

Indeed it was. There was sabotage on a crisis event that me and other player threw in cards on, whose result allowed Chaz to brig someone. Since he (as it turned out) wasn't a Cylon he had a 50% shot at brigging the Cylon. Sadly he guessed wrong, which had some bad effects. For one, since he had taken the presidency from a player (Baltar) who hadn't been acting suspiciously at all and hadn't given any reason beyond "hey, why not?", that plus him brigging me led me to think that he was a Cylon. Secondly, as it turned out the two people in line for the admiralty were the sleeper agent and the Cylon.

Given hindsight, it's really good now to know how important fuel is. As admiral I chose our first destination. Both choices were mixed but one was fairly reckless (lose 3 fuel but go farther - 3 spaces). I chose that one since I figured "hey, we need to go far to win, right?" Also I think I'd be more nuke-happy in hindsight - a couple Basestars showed up at one point and started shooting at us, and wound up damaging the fuel, which was costly.

For what it's worth, I (mostly) believed Baltar when he cleared you. Of course, I had already voted to brig you by that point.

I have yet to wind up as the traitor in any of these traitor-mechanic games. It'd be fun to go through that at some point.

[Chaz]

My main thinking in taking the Presidency was that I was the only one on Colonial One, so I was in a better position to be cycling through quorum cards in the President's office, while Baltar was hanging out on the Galactica. We could've swapped positions, but frankly, I like power.

To the humans' credit, we did peg the sleeper cylon pretty damn fast. I have to admit that whenever we play a game with a hidden traitor, I usually spend the first game hurling accusations around willy-nilly. It seems like unless I do that, people kind of forget there's a traitor. For me, half the fun is wild paranoia, so I make it my personal responsibility to foster that.

My fondest memory of playing Bang! with my gaming group from a few years ago was a start of game tradition. After role cards went out and the sheriff revealed, he immediately asked, "Okay, who's my deputy?" Everyone would raise their hands immediately, then accuse everyone else of being filthy liars. It was always funny.

[El Guapo]

See, if you'd just *explained* why you were taking the Presidency that might have been less suspicious. You could've said to Baltar - "hey, rather than spending cards swapping positions let's just get me elected and then you can stay on the ship" instead of "muhahahahaha I want power!!!"

Also *we* didn't really do much with the sleeper agent - he brigged himself. He drew both the "cylon sympathizer" and the "you are a cylon" card in the sleeper agent phase, and the cylon sympathizer card brigs the person who draws it if one resource is in the red - which it was. So that was a lucky break.

[Chaz]

Damn it, I don't have to explain myself! POWER!!!

I forgot about the sleeper thing. Here I thought we were smart. At least we didn't let him out of the brig. Also terribly appropriate that it was Boomer who wound up as a human-siding sympathizer and a cylon who spent most of the game in the brig.

In hindsight, he probably just should've revealed himself as soon as it was clear he wasn't getting enough support to escape. Then he could've been hitting us with crisis cards the entire time instead of not drawing them on his turn.

[Zarathud]

Titan went for sale on Tanga again today, hepcat.

I actually like the game play in Race for the Galaxy but find it more trouble than it's worth to play due to the wonky heiroglyphics.

The heiroglyphics are elegant, but there's something of a learning curve. Once you know them, they really simplify the game. Until then, you'll need to always have handly the initial 2-sided "decoder card." The more advanced rules have a text box describing what happens -- but if it's supposed to be easy, the symbols alone do the job.

There are also reminders in the upper right hand corner to show bonuses that aren't noticable by just skimming the turn phase you've activated. The icons are always by the turn they activate: Turn I Explore is on top, Turn II Develop, followed by III Settle, $ Sales which is part of IV Consume, and then V Develop.

You'll want to set aside the special victory conditions since those are not only confusing icons, but frustrating if you can't change your strategy to claim them.

[AWS260]

A question for the veteran boardgamers here: Will my wife enjoy Twilight Struggle? It looks fantastic to me, but I'm hesitant to pull the trigger unless I can rope her into playing it more than once (the baby is too young to play it with me, and the cats are too smart). Here are the facts:

-- She enjoys Arkham Horror a lot, although we hardly ever play since due to the aforementioned infant.
-- She really likes playing Kremlin with my Kremlin-obsessed cousins.
-- She thinks Pandemic is boring (she hasn't said as much, but I can kind of tell from her expression when we play)
-- She's OK with Small World, but doesn't love it.

Insights/guesses welcome.

[hepcat]

Twilight Struggle is firmly in my top 5 favorite games of all time. That being said, I doubt you'll have much success selling this to your wife based on what you just listed as her likes/dislikes.

It's probably closer to Pandemic (at a VERY rudimentary level) and Small World than it is Arkham Horror. Both of those are about area control and at it's basic level, so is Twilight Struggle.

I'm not familiar with Kremlin, so I can't draw an analogy there.

I don't mean to be sexist, but Twilight Struggle is pretty much a "guy's game". I personally love the combination of sacrifice (should I use my card for ops points or the event bonus? if i use this enemy card for ops, how badly will it hurt me?) and strategy (how quickly can i take over western europe?).

There's a vassal online implementation. We should see if we can set something up sometime so you can try it.

Titan went for sale on Tanga again today, hepcat.

I actually like the game play in Race for the Galaxy but find it more trouble than it's worth to play due to the wonky heiroglyphics.

The heiroglyphics are elegant,

I saw it before you posted this and had to order it. I'm too damn weak. seriously though, i need to stop buying so many damn games.

As for RftG, I'm not sure I'd use the word "elegant" when describing the icons in the base game.

[El Guapo]

I can comment on the Kremlin side, since I love the game Kremlin, and have played Twilight Struggle (once). Kremlin is NOTHING like Twilight Struggle, other than the common presence of the Soviet Union. Kremlin's a very light-hearted game that's semi-light on strategy - it's more of a party-game than a high strategy game. Tons of fun as you have a turn where you purge almost the entire politburo and then have a show trial where the KGB head is sent to Siberia, but not really grand strategy.

Twilight Struggle, in addition to being two player rather than 4-6 player, is more of a serious strategy game in the vein of "control as much territory as you can" kind of thing. It's not light hearted (nor especially dire), so people aren't going to be laughing as much during the game as during Kremlin.

So...I wouldn't think that liking Kremlin would correspond much to liking Twilight Struggle.

[Jow]

out of curiosity, is anyone currently keeping up with the Game of Thrones LCG chapter packs or even just actively playing the game?

[Boudreaux]

out of curiosity, is anyone currently keeping up with the Game of Thrones LCG chapter packs or even just actively playing the game?

Actively playing the game, yes. Keeping up with the chapter packs, no. I love the core game, and a friend of mine has purchased the Martell and Greyjoy expansions so we have six House decks to play with. However, none of us have much interest in the deck-building that the chapter packs seem made to allow. There's so much gameplay just in the core decks, we have not gone further. They're keeping us plenty busy. What's been interesting is we've all focused on learning a single House over many games. Mine has been Lannister, and I've come within one turn (one point!) of winning the game.

The only expansion aspect that intrigues me is the concept of Shadow cards, as I could see them being hugely useful for Lannister. The problem with their deck is the relative lack of military strength, particularly as the few military characters are pretty good, and become huge targets as soon as they're out. Being able to keep some military characters in Shadows and protect them from being killed before acting could be a big benefit. But we haven't played with Shadow cards yet.

[AWS260]

Thanks for the feedback re. Twilight Struggle. Based on your responses, I can't really justify buying the game right now. My new plan is to put it on my wish list and get someone to buy it for me for Christmas! That way there's no guilt, and I can get in a few games with sister -- who I think would love it -- while we're both in Chi-town for the holidays.

There's a vassal online implementation.

I don't know what those words mean, but I'm willing to try anything. Anything boardgame-wise, that is. The rest of your "recreational" activities frighten me.

[hepcat]

Vassal is an online app/service through which users can play boardgames.

Teh App/Engine

Teh Twilight Struggle module

p.s. The Washington's War module looks great too

[AWS260]

Vassal is an online app/service through which users can play boardgames.

Teh App/Engine

Teh Twilight Struggle module

Very interesting. I will check that out.

[baelthazar]

I don't mean to be sexist, but Twilight Struggle is pretty much a "guy's game". I personally love the combination of sacrifice (should I use my card for ops points or the event bonus? if i use this enemy card for ops, how badly will it hurt me?) and strategy (how quickly can i take over western europe?).

I hate to say it, but Hepcat is right here. Unless your wife is a history buff, then you aren't going to have any luck. You might get your wife to play 1960: The Making of the President (my wife didn't like it) as it is shorter to play, same mechanics, and a little "easier" to find a strategy - although I found it a drier game than Twilight Struggle.

I suggest, if you want something the wife will play, look into Small World or El Grande. Both are area control and El Grande uses cards (a little like Twilight Struggle) to decide moves. My wife enjoys Defenders of the Realm, Kingsburg, Last Night on Earth, and Agricola most of all, and she really like Puerto Rico on the off times we have 3-4 players. Dominions is also a good wife-game, but I would skip Thunderstone or Race for the Symbols Galaxy, as both of these have themes that my wife doesn't care for and are more convoluted than the relatively streamlined Dominions.

If your wife really loves Arkham Horror, then I suggest Ghost Stories, if you only have two players, or the upcoming re-release of Betrayal at the House on the Hill, if you regularly have 3+ players. Both are similar to Arkham Horror, play much much faster, and have that same story building experience. Tales of the Arabian Nights is also supposed to be go for this, but I have never played it.

I just ordered Constantinopolis, as it is supposed to basically be "two player Puerto Rico." I also got Age of Empires III in a trade (for 1960, actually) and should be getting Titan soon in another trade.

[Boudreaux]

Tales of the Arabian Nights is a wonderful storytelling game, but anyone who plays games to win should avoid it. There are some amazingly great storytelling moments and situations that can come about during the game, but there is often very little you can do to influence your success. It's sort of just "what happens, happens". Fun, but more of an experience than a "game".

If your wife likes Arkham Horror, another suggestion would be Flying Frog's A Touch of Evil. It's very similar to Arkham Horror, borrowing a lot of the same mechanics, but is much shorter. On the other hand, some might argue there's really no reason to own both.

Twilight Struggle is awesome, but given its length you need to either really like strategy games or really be interested in the time period and theme for it to work.

[AWS260]

Many thanks for these excellent suggestions. I think it's time to clear out some board games that I'll never play again (Axis & Allies and Worst-Case Scenario, I'm looking at you) to make room for newcomers.

[Jow]

Actively playing the game, yes. Keeping up with the chapter packs, no. I love the core game, and a friend of mine has purchased the Martell and Greyjoy expansions so we have six House decks to play with. However, none of us have much interest in the deck-building that the chapter packs seem made to allow. There's so much gameplay just in the core decks, we have not gone further. They're keeping us plenty busy. What's been interesting is we've all focused on learning a single House over many games. Mine has been Lannister, and I've come within one turn (one point!) of winning the game.

The only expansion aspect that intrigues me is the concept of Shadow cards, as I could see them being hugely useful for Lannister. The problem with their deck is the relative lack of military strength, particularly as the few military characters are pretty good, and become huge targets as soon as they're out. Being able to keep some military characters in Shadows and protect them from being killed before acting could be a big benefit. But we haven't played with Shadow cards yet.

Glad you're enjoying the cores. I've yet to play anything Core decks in real life myself, but I did get the opportunity to run a few games using a Stark deck I built vs. a pretty damn good Martell icon-stripping deck using OCTGN2 (great app - check it out if you're interested in virtual card play). It really is a completely different experience. My biggest issue with the unmodified core decks are that with one copy of each card you lose some depth (the opportunity to play dupes for "saves", card luck a bigger factor, etc, wildly unfocused plot decks, etc). If I recall correctly, though, you had someone modify the core decks and actually include some dupes... right?

I've read Lanni Shadows has been incredibly competitive in the megacompetitive scene. I wouldn't even know where to begin as even though I own everything up until the last pack or two of the last cycle completed, I've yet to try to incorporate Shadows into decks.

[hepcat]

Many thanks for these excellent suggestions. I think it's time to clear out some board games that I'll never play again (Axis & Allies and Worst-Case Scenario, I'm looking at you) to make room for newcomers.

Oh god, you and me both. I JUST ordered Titan thanks to that evil Tanga.com and their ungodly sales and started looking for space in my closet for it once it arrives...

....unsuccessfully.

Hey, I just had an idea. When we have our bi-annual Octocon we should have a small auction for folks who want to clean out their game closets.

[Chaz]

I wish there was an easier way to get rid of board games. If you want to sell them for what they're worth, you have to sell online. If you want to sell them in person, you usually wind up having to get way less than they're worth. I'm thinking of just giving my unplayed ones to some buddies. That way, I'll have playing access to them, but they don't take up my shelf space!

[El Guapo]

I'm thinking of just giving my unplayed ones to some buddies. That way, I'll have playing access to them, but they don't take up my shelf space!

I think this is a genius idea. Really, a brilliant idea of unparalleled insight and wisdom. Random poster on the internet whose identity I didn't bother to check before posting this comment, I salute your amazing solution to this otherwise insurmountable problem.