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

[Nytmare]

Kings of Air and Steam - Programmed turn, economic, steam punk rail-and-air-ship game - We only played one game of this, and though I enjoyed myself, I don't know if I have a really good handle on the game. It was unfortunately one of those new game where, between my turns, instead of being able to strategize and pay attention to what everyone else was doing, I was busy reading through the rule book answering everyone else's questions.

The game is split into 5 rounds. Each round is split into four turns.

On each round your airships will be zipping around the map, picking up and redistributing goods to your rail lines, so that your trains can then deliver the goods to the cities that want them.

At the beginning of each round, you choose (program) four movement cards that designate how far (not where) your airship will travel. On each turn, players simultaneously flip over their movement cards, and in initiative order (designated by the cards) decide where their ship moves, whether they pick up, or unload any cargo, and what action they want their ship to take. The possible actions are to drift (move one space), build a new train depot (make traveling along a rail line possible/cheaper), upgrade your ship (make it's movement and carrying capacity better), upgrade your trains (increase the movement of your trains), make a delivery (move goods between your depots or a city), or to collect 3 dollars from your investors (get money from the bank).

After 5 rounds (plus one last run of deliveries for any goods already in the rail system) the game ends, and victory points are based off of a combination of money, your ship and train upgrades, and how extensive your rail lines are.

As I said, overall I enjoyed it, I don't think it's going to be one of those games that I want to play all the time, but I'm definitely looking forward to playing it again. The production value of the game is through the roof. Everything, the boards, the pieces, even the freaking box, are well made and have some serious heft to them. The only minor quibble I have is that the (albeit beautiful) plastic airships are so big that they kinda get in the way of playing the game. I think that, in the end, I would have been happier with some wooden meeple airships instead.

 

[Xeterog]

Lots of good games mentioned here, but I'm sorta surprised that no one has mentioned 7 Wonders yet. Great game for 2-7 (8 with expansions) game that takes about 30-45 min to play no matter how many players you have. I have the game and all the expansions, and we often play a game before everyone shows up for the evening, or after the main game (usually a RPG of some sort) is over for the evening.

 

[Nytmare]

For those who aren't familiar with it, 7 Wonders is a card game built around the booster draft mechanic. Instead of drafting cards to build a deck that you play with, you're drafting to build your empire a card at a time, adding to your resources, victory points, military strength, and general "rule breaking" abilities.

7 Wonders is a game that I am always surprised to see played very solitarily. I've played it a lot, with many different groups, and in general I only see people playing offensively via the games military mechanic and only rarely by their draft choices. I would argue that it is unfortunately one of those games where the winner has a smidge too much to do with where people are sitting, over how well they're playing the game.

It would extend the length of the game pretty dramatically, but I'd be very interested to try playing it with a Rochester draft.

 

[Avaru]

Asgard is an awesome, although very heavy game with with a welcome chance of setting (norse mythology). It's a card-as-action game with cards being available to everyone all the time, but usage being limited due to other players using up slots. There is no "you cannot do that" in this game though which makes it a lot better than many others. Player interaction is intense and thrilling and the game has a really nice "showdown" part at the end.

Vikings may sound similar, but it's quite a different game. Easy to get into, it's a bit of a betting game. The game mixes getting "workers" with expansion at the same time and has some pretty neat economy system. Do not play anything other than the advanced rules, even on the first play.

 

[tomBitonti]

Have played the iOS version of Eclipse. Has anyone played both the board and the iOS version to compare them? It's a good game, but seems flawed (to me): You can be majorly hosed by the initial hex draws, and the amount of victory points due to fighting is annoying. Also, the techs seem wildly different in value (the two pip hull tech and the missile tech seem comparatively too good), and you can be likewise hosed by your order in obtaining tech.

Thx!

TomB

 

[bob the happy zombie]

I must recommend
The castles of Burgundy my favourite game can be played in about an hour and a half.
It has great mechanic which gives you controllable luck you roll two dice and can use the dice for a variety of actions. It is a classic idea collect the most VPs. You are rewarded for combinations of speed in filling the areas on your player board, completing set goals first or second, and collecting various sets of tiles.
The theme is not especially strong but the replayability is excellent with many paths and combinations that lead to victory. It should be noted that the standard boards are all balanced(they are identical) there are some advanced boards that are deemed to be superior to others.
You can play for free on a site called Boite a jeux if you want to check it out

 

[Nytmare]

For about three weeks, the people at my local favorite game store were telling me I should try this new scifi deck building game. Since I already had a favorite deck builder (and have about six or seven others that we hardly play at all) as well as a handful of scifi "build a Space Army" games, I foolishly ignored them.

I will never doubt them again.

Star Realms, is a poorly named masterpiece. It is everything that I love about Dominion minus a handful of things I never realized I didn't like. You are mighty Space Warlord/Emperor/Mega-Pope attempting to unite the universe by building an armada (deck of cards) and destroying anyone who refuses to be your friend (your friends).

The game is amazingly combo-riffic. You're slowly building your deck out of the ships (play them once) and bases (stay in play till someone destroys them) of four very different, distinct factions. Each faction's ships have secondary abilities which trigger when you have more than one of those faction's ships in play; BUT a deck built up of only one faction will discover that though they are able to do one thing disgustingly well, they're outclassed in several others.

It is amazingly fast, and setup and cleanup are almost non-existent. The majority of the cards exist as one single Trade Deck, so you're not spending a lot of time regrouping and resorting cards.

As you play, everyone's deck just gets better, and more streamlined and deadly. The win condition is hit point based (aka Authority), and is tracked outside your deck, so your deck isn't getting more cluttered as you get more powerful.

The game is CHEAP and really compact. 15 bucks gets you a single set of cards, which you can use for a two player game. Each additional deck of cards allows you to add up to two more players to a max (I think?) of six players.

Freaking. Amazing.