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

[MerricB]

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!

Very interesting! I haven't tried the team game yet.

 

[Stormonu]

Here's another one we recently tried out:

ZOMBICIDE: This game is the board version of Left 4 Dead. Playing as one of several survivors of a zombie apocalypse, you take on different missions in your struggle to survive against unending hordes of zombies. As you kill more zombies, you gain special abilities, but the "threat level" goes up, meaning there's more and more zombies to take down. Woe to the group that lets one person get too experienced while the others lag behind... The game comes with your typical shambler zombies (40 minis), runner/fast zombies (16 minis), fatty (tough) zombies (8 minis) and the nigh-unbeatable Abomination. The rules are simple (though they've got some problems*) and the action is generally fast and furious - with lots of "oh-noes!!!" moments. Best of all, the missions aren't "scrag 'em all" - the first one has you hunting the city for food and water and getting out of the city before the zombies overrun your group (which trust me, they WILL). Most interestingly, guillotine games, which makes the game, has put together extra survivors (players) you can copy onto the blank side of the included character sheets and/or you can download their FREE app that not only tracks all the stuff for the characters (and does your dice rolls, if you're inclined), but includes all the characters - including the ones on their site. Overall, its a great game with a lot of repeatability and customizability.

* Cars are stupid good (though you can still get your arrogant butt hauled out of them and killed pretty quickly), the zombie-split-and-multiply when following same distance path rules is annoying and the target priority rules (with ranged weapons and cars: target survivors in square first, then zombies) is a little annoying considering how easily you can get overrun (even when you thought you were completely safe).

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Games of Thones Board game: Take the role of one of six houses and battle your way to victory!

I've played this twice now and both times we've not had the full six players. This means some areas of the map are "NPCs" but can still be captured and still count towards the victory conditions. IMO, it's far too easy to capture NPC sites and the game revolves around stopping the people nearest to them from doing so. I suspect it'd be a much better game with all six players. Still, it's good fun and has a neat mechanic revolving around who sits on the Iron Throne (determining turn order). Needs at least another go.

 

[MerricB]

Games of Thones Board game: Take the role of one of six houses and battle your way to victory!

I've played this twice now and both times we've not had the full six players. This means some areas of the map are "NPCs" but can still be captured and still count towards the victory conditions. IMO, it's far too easy to capture NPC sites and the game revolves around stopping the people nearest to them from doing so. I suspect it'd be a much better game with all six players. Still, it's good fun and has a neat mechanic revolving around who sits on the Iron Throne (determining turn order). Needs at least another go.

I have the first edition of the game. In many ways, it's a retheme of Diplomacy with elements of Dune. Like Diplomacy and Dune, it doesn't work all that well with fewer than the full complement. The original was 5 players, with a 6th player added in an expansion, but the neutrals really cause a problem when you don't play with everyone.

Cheers!

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I've played this twice now and both times we've not had the full six players. This means some areas of the map are "NPCs" but can still be captured and still count towards the victory conditions. IMO, it's far too easy to capture NPC sites and the game revolves around stopping the people nearest to them from doing so.

I've played this twice and we didn't have the full six players either. The biggest strategic error that we had in both games was realizing too late that we needed to stop the folks closest to the NPCs from taking them. I would like to try it a third time with that in mind.

 

[chaochou]

Stuff I've played recently:

Netrunner (FFG): A quality update on WotC's original CCG (now an LCG with known card distributions in the packs). An assymetrical 2-player card game where one is a hacker trying to break into the servers of a corporation and the other is the corporation trying to protect itself long enough to carry out its plans. Clever and tense. New cards are being released monthly: either this is good as the game is constantly evolving, or it's not because it's a treadmill to keep up with the game. Right now I think the former, but fatigue could set in.

Mage Wars (Arcane Wonders): Superficially its a card game, but better viewed as a wargame with cards. Two mages battle it out in an arena armed with a deck of cards representing monsters, buffs, terrain, enchantments and equipment. It's very well done, intuitive, and gets you feeling like you are a mage in a life or death battle. Not quick to play, but I like it a lot.

Sentinels of the Multiverse (Greater than Games): Another card game - this one's a co-operative Superhero game where you all gang up to try and defeat a villain. Super easy to teach and play. Even with new players a battle can be done in 25 minutes. Not the deepest game ever, but does enough to capture the rollicking punch em up of a comic book boss fight.

Twilight Struggle (GMT): 2-player card driven game (CDG) covering the Cold War. You play either the US or USSR attempting to wrestle political control of Europe, Asia, S America, Africa and the Middle East by using cards for events - whether that's the Cuban Missile Crisis, the blockade of Berlin or by hosting the Olympic Games. Fans of this seem to analyse hands and potential plays with an almost chess-like devotion. I play it casually (and it's very good) but I think it's as deep as you want it to be.

Race for the Galaxy: A multi-player card game in which the actions of the other players are almost irrelevant in your pursuit of combo optimisation. Not my cup of tea.

Lord of the Rings CCG (FFG): As a game I don't really get it. But it is a) co-operative and b) sociable and c) something lots of people can agree on and d) allows people to make 'Horn of Gondor' jokes and e) I get to beat stuff up with Dwarves. So I forgive it its flaws.

 

[Jhaelen]

Race for the Galaxy: A multi-player card game in which the actions of the other players are almost irrelevant in your pursuit of combo optimisation. Not my cup of tea.

That's only true when everyone's new to the game, though. Once everyone has a good grasp on the game and knows which cards there are, you will have to anticipate other players' actions in order to win.
I agree that it's probably not everybody's cup of tea, though.

Myself, I'm playing a lot of Netrunner recently. FFG's update is very good and I already liked playing the original. Even without data packs you can play it for a long time before it gets stale since your actions are more important than the cards.

I recently played Rex (an update of the Dune boardgame) for the first time (with six players) but even though I won I didn't really enjoy it very much. The victory conditions are a bit weird (to not call them random). Maybe it would take more games to appreciate it fully.

 

[chaochou]

Myself, I'm playing a lot of Netrunner recently. FFG's update is very good and I already liked playing the original. Even without data packs you can play it for a long time before it gets stale since your actions are more important than the cards.

Yeah, I was a fan of the original. But I prefer the FFG version because I can take the base set to a game night and play against friends who don't collect knowing we've got interesting, playable and balanced decks straight from the box. That's a massive plus for me.

I played in an online tournament organised over at BGG before Christmas and it was a lot of fun. However, I didn't sign up for Tourney 2 which just opened simply because I haven't kept up with the metagame. I have What Lies Ahead and Trace Amount but haven't had time to use them, understand the new cards or construct new deck ideas, and being out of the loop in that environment would hurt.

 

[innerdude]

Picked up Fantasy Flight's Cadwallon: City of Thieves over Christmas and just tried it out with the wife last week. Overall was fun, with a great "flavor" for the setting. As a two-player game it ran smoothly, even for the two of us never having tried it before.

The concept is that you're a party / troupe of 4 thieves trying to get as much loot as possible out of the city. Each party member can only carry three treasure items, so you have to balance using party members to loot vs. protecting other members. On the surface there's no one complex rule, but it's managing your available resources as efficiently as possible. In play it's something of a cross between one of the WotC Ravenloft / Drizzt games and the old kids game Mystery Mansion or Clue. As a two player game I'd give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. It's fun and engaging, though I don't know that it's one of those games you'd want to play 2-3 times in a row. As a once a month game though, I think it would be great.

Total play time for us was about 1:45, though that included learning the basic rules and setup. Once e eryone knows the rules, I suspect even a four player game wouldn't last much longer than 90 minutes.

Couple of cons: out of the box it only supports 4 players. If you're like my group, we often have 6 or 7 people around on game nights. Also, I worry that with more than 3 players, the basic premise of stealing and looting gets lost in favor of simply attacking other parties, which is a fun diversion with two players, but would quickly become tedious with 4.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

City of Horror: Zombies attack a small town. Try to survive for four hours.

The game sports some fantastic production values, with it's big gameboard including a 3d water tower, dozens of zombie stand-ups, 21 different citizen stand-ups and several sets of colorful, stylish playing cards.

You run a set of randomly drawn citizens who try to find solace in one of the five buildings, perhaps find vaccine and/or canned food and make sure that the other player's citizens are devoured by the zombies. Each citizen has a special ability she can use once per game, reducing the victory points to be scored for her survival at the same time.

Zombies are deployed and moved according to randomly drawn cards, which - with a special exception - you see only after you've decided on your move. Attacks occur in each building where a condition (more zombies than people, or three or more zombies) is fulfilled. Attack means that one citizen s devoured. The citizens inside said building vote on who gets the honor. Voting is subject to negotiations, blackmailing, promises and the occasional Action Card.

If there are some spoils in the building - vaccine or Action Cards - another vote takes place, this time to determine who gets to assign the goodies.

Each building also allows a special action (resting to reactivate a citizen's special action, swapping Action Cards, buying vaccine, looking at the zombie card before deciding on your move).

Now each building only has a few positions for the fearful citizens. When you want to move into a building but no space is available, your citizens ends up on the street crossing. You can snatch up a canned food token which is worth a random amount of VP at the end, but one of the citizens at the street crossing will be eliminated at the end of the round. Here, no vote takes place, but the zombie leader selects its morsel according to a distinct rule.

After four rounds the Air Force arrives and rescues the surviving citizens. You need to drop one dose of vaccine for each citizens in order to score his value. Additional points are awarded for additional doses of medicine and the canned food you've acquired (What? The Air Force rescues people, but they have to bring their own food?)

City of Horror essentially boils down to a series of negotiations. In our six player game, each player only had three citizens. With only four rounds in the game, each negotiation became a pretty much isolated affair. Typical deals like "Vote for me, I'll return the favour in the next similar situation" weren't made because the "next similar situation" was not sure to turn up. It never came to a heated negotiation between us because the situation was mostly crystal clear from the outset.

Now, we're all experienced Euro-gamers who dissect a game into its mechanical parts and anylse those parts to build a winning strategy: negotiating feels somewhat alien to us. Players with more enthusiasm for this aspect may find City of Horror much more enjoyable than we did.

Another caveat: we played with the full complement of six players, which made it next to impossible to build a situation where you gain a majority of the votes on your own because of clever play. It was even hard to have two of your citizens meet in one place. This made a tactical play preferred by our group next to impossible. If we hadn't unanimously decided to relegate City of Horrors to the never-to-be-played-again container, I'd perhaps try it out with three players instead of six. Maybe there'd be more possibilities.

Even forgetting about our verdict, there remains a quandary. Price and production value are not adequate to the play value, IMHO. You'll experience 24 negotiation situations maximum. In our game we had about half of that number. The wiggling room for offers and counter-offers is very limited due to the lack of ressources one might offer, so many of this negotiations are very short affairs.

Such a game might have been realised as a little card game with a handfull of cardboard counters without taking away any of the play-value. All the rest is nothing but heavy, expensive eye-candy. If I had bought City of Horror, I'd be really disappointed.

Well, with the first bad experience of 2013 behind us, we're looking forward to all the new games this year will bring us!