Recent board games and what I thought [add your own capsule reviews]

[GreyLord]

In fact, my own fascination with boardgames is relatively recent; most of my boardgaming started about 12 years ago (yes, after 3E came out!) when I found Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. And my *major* infatuation with boardgames is really in the past six or seven years. And, I've got to say, you've come in at a great time for boardgaming, Morrus. You really have a lot of very, very good games to choose from, and most of the ones you'll want are readily available.

Pre-2000, the boardgame scene was actually pretty poor. The advent of the "Eurogames" onto the market has caused *everyone* to lift their games.

Cheers!

I disagree...as a Wargamer speaking of course!!!

I was a Wargamer before I was a Roleplayer!!!

So was Gary (rest his soul)!!!!

There have always been some great games out there, the landscape has just changed over the past decade.

It's an exciting time though, over the past five years we've seen MANY reprints of old popular games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s!

 

[Nellisir]

I bought and played Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries last week; it was only my second time playing a Ticket to Ride game, and I enjoyed it a -lot- more than the first time. Half of the fun is trying to figure out where you're going to go.

I played Gloom two nights ago, with 4 people. Two of us "got it" right off, one picked it up gradually, and one had a very hard time reading the cards and understanding the game. She won, largely because we left her alone except for helping. The two of us who "got it" had a great time with it, though -- it got heated and tricky towards the end, trying to off the right (or wrong!) people.

We played Cards Against Humanity as well. That game has serious issues. I love it.

I've played Forbidden Island a number of times, and frankly, it's never been very exciting. Never lost.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Lords of Waterdeep: Got this for Xmas and have played it a couple of times so far. Just to add to what other people have said above I really enjoyed playing it. Simple mechanic that everyone picked up nice and quickly, had a nice feel to it, competitive without being too back-stabby. And I suck at it. Finished last and second to last.

Cards Against Humanity: Love this game for it's absolutely edge-of-the-line humour. Was very lucky to be involved in a playtest last night for a UK expansion - look out for it later this year. We pushed to keep "eating Stephen Fry's brain to gain his intelligence" as a new white card.

Ascension: A deck building game, similar to Dominion in a way. On your turn you purchase new heroes and constructs to go into your deck whilst also defeating monsters, all to earn honour (the victory point equivalent). There are various suites of cards themed on different in-game mechanics (e.g. the Englightened cards tend towards improving existing cards by swapping them out or drawing more cards, whereas Void cards help you defeat monsters or trim down your deck by getting rid of poor-value cards). I have this on my phone and I think it's fantastic, do get it.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Lords of Waterdeep: Got this for Xmas and have played it a couple of times so far. Just to add to what other people have said above I really enjoyed playing it. Simple mechanic that everyone picked up nice and quickly, had a nice feel to it, competitive without being too back-stabby. And I suck at it. Finished last and second to last.

Cards Against Humanity: Love this game for it's absolutely edge-of-the-line humour. Was very lucky to be involved in a playtest last night for a UK expansion - look out for it later this year. We pushed to keep "eating Stephen Fry's brain to gain his intelligence" as a new white card.

Ascension: A deck building game, similar to Dominion in a way. On your turn you purchase new heroes and constructs to go into your deck whilst also defeating monsters, all to earn honour (the victory point equivalent). There are various suites of cards themed on different in-game mechanics (e.g. the Englightened cards tend towards improving existing cards by swapping them out or drawing more cards, whereas Void cards help you defeat monsters or trim down your deck by getting rid of poor-value cards). I have this on my phone and I think it's fantastic, do get it.

 

[GX.Sigma]

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (FFG): It told me it was not a CCG. It lied.

 

[MerricB]

Last week's gaming:

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (FFG): This is a 1-4 player game by FFG using the Living Card Game model; that is: it's like a collectible card game (you build decks from your collection of cards and then play them) with two difference. The first is that it's non-random. You only need to buy one of each 60-card monthly booster to have a full playset (although the core set is annoyingly distributed, you probably need 2-3 of them). The second is that it's co-operative. Each new booster has a new scenario to play against. Scenarios range from easy to hard, from well-constructed to annoyingly broken. Generally it's a fun game. We played a four-player game of The Battle of Lake-Town, a special scenario debuted at GenCon 2012, and lost horribly as Smaug burnt down Lake-Town and killed our characters.

Village: This is a new Eurogame which won the Kennerspiel des Jahres award (The Kennerspiel award goes to more "gamer" games than the regular award, which is normally more family-oriented). It's a fascinating resource collection/spending game where your family members (who enable some actions) die during the game. Part of the fun is making them die when in the right profession - as where they die can give you VPs at end of game! It's a nice game for 2-4 players, although probably better with 3-4 than 2.

The Adventurers: Temple of Chac: This is an "Indiana Jones"-like game - you have to get in and out of a temple filled with treasure whilst avoiding crushing walls, a rolling boulder, trapped tiles over lava, a rickety bridge and a raging waterfall. It has a number of very nice mechanics: you travel slower the more treasure you're carrying, and there's a memory sub-game for identifying the trapped tiles. It's fairly light, and quite luck-based, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to.

Through the Ages: This is my favourite boardgame. It's designed by Vlaada Chvatil (Dungeon Lords, MageKnight Boardgame, Space Alert) who is one of the most brilliant game-designers today. TTA is a civilisation game where you have to juggle your resources (ore, food, science & population) whilst trying to increase your culture and draft the technology cards you need. It's a long game - about one hour per player, plays 2-4 - but it's quite brilliant. Territorial ambitions are abstracted, rather than dealing with a map you fight over territory cards or use conflict cards directly against another player, so it doesn't play like a wargame, but you can't let your military slip too far behind. I can't recommend this enough for lovers of "heavy" Eurogames.

Rex: Final Days of the Empire - this is the retheme of the classic game of Dune. It's not quite as good as the original, as some of the additions dilute the original brilliance, but it does do some things right. You need six players for this one, and it takes 2-4 hours. Basically, the Sol Federation has started bombing the capital of the Galactic Empire, and you're all factions trying to gain control of the planet. Each faction has unique powers, and the interaction of them is brilliant. The original design is by the Cosmic Encounter team, and even if I don't like this as much as Dune, it's still good. Much more of a wargame than anything else!

Cheers!

 

[Slickam]

Some of the games I've picked up through Kickstarter:

BATTLECON: WAR OF INDINES -- My favorite game of the last year. It's a 2D fighting game done as a card game. You choose your fighter (out of 18, plus promos and another 30 or so in their current Kickstarter project), which gives you a unique set of styles (Flaming, Armored, etc.) plus a common set of bases (Strike, Throw, etc.). Each turn you combine one of each to choose your move, which sets the range, damage and priority (initiative) of your attack. The game is for 2-4 players, either 1 on 1 matches, tag teams or boss fights. The standalone expansion adds a solo mode and 4 on 1 boss fights.

ALIEN FRONTIERS -- A game about colonizing a new planet. You get d6 spaceships, which you roll and allocate to different facilities. Each one takes different rolls to use (buying a new ship needs doubles, plus resources, stealing resources from others needs a run of 3 dice, ...) The game goes until someone lands the required number of colonies on the planet. Each colony is placed in a territory which gives a bonus if you have the most colonies there. It's a fun game for 2-4 players, but my group hasn't played it much recently.

SUNRISE CITY -- Sim City the board game. The board is made of zoning tiles that affect what types of buildings can be built on them. Each turn players take turn adding more zoning tiles, bidding on the tiles they want to place buildings on, then placing buildings. I enjoyed it, but the auction mechanics fell flat for the rest of my group.

EMINENT DOMAIN -- A 4X deck building game. Each turn you can play one card from your hand, then draw a card from the stacks of new cards to use a different action, which you can boost with cards from your hand. This lets you scan new planets to settle, research new technologies, attack or settle planets or produce or sell resources. Each other player can then either take the same action or draw a card from their deck into their hand. I've only played a couple games of this so far, but my group likes 4X games and deck builders, so I think it will be played a lot more.

 

[Nellisir]

Played Netrunner last night for the first time. I can see how it could be fun, but the person I was playing with had only played once, and preferred to (try and) explain the rules rather than just hand me the booklet, so.... after an hour and only 3 turns we called it quits. That's probably at the edge of what I would call a "fiddly-bits" game.

 

[MerricB]

I had my two games on the Ticket to Ride: Heart of Africa map this week. It is very definitely an expert-level board. Ticket to Ride is an exceptional (gateway) game where you try to connect routes across various maps that match the tickets you've drawn. The Heart of Africa map is very, very easy to block someone on, especially in 4-5 player games, and the colour scheme is coded to the various parts of the map, making it a lot harder to collect the right colours. The wild cards are *so* much more important. Highly recommended for lovers of the TTR series.

I also had my first game with the Mage Knight Boardgame: The Lost Legion expansion. I've mentioned MK before: IMO, it's the best fantasy adventure boardgame for people who like strategy games; it's sort of a combination of a deck-building game and Magic Realm, the latter because it gives you a very large selection of possible routes to victory. You can explore dungeons, kill monsters, find treasures, loot monasteries, recruit allies, and besiege cities in this game, and it's one I adore, though I don't think it's for the casual gamer. The Lost Legion adds a bunch more variety in terms of skills and spells to learn and monsters to fight, as well as adding a big co-operative scenario against the Lost Legion itself. The expansion pieces aren't quite compatible with my first edition MK set, but they're close enough to work.

I also got in six games of Netrunner. I love the game - of all the CCG-type games out there, it requires the most thinking while playing the game (rather than just having a good deck). The Fantasy Flight version is far superior to the original, and is very playable with just one or two core sets.

Apart from that, I've played lots of games of the LOTR card game, and few games of Brass and Village this week.

[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], have you tried the Doctor Who Card Game yet? It's a lighter design from Martin Wallace, one of my three favourite boardgame designers (The other two are Stefan Feld and Vlaada Chvatil).

Cheers!

 

[Jan van Leyden]

We played a game of Ticket to Ride: Legend of Asia with our children and two friends who are very experienced in cut-throat TtR. The one aspect completeley new to me was the team play, where you play together with your neighbour. Players can/may/must share ticket and train cards according to very specific rules. It has to be a bad game as I lost. My usual strategy of combining high-value cards with long routes, thus building up as much time pressure as possible, didn't work out. Well, more plays are necessary to explore the new strategy space!