What War or Boardgame are you playing?

[stevemitchell]

Odds and sods: I played The Struggle for New France from Blue Panther, ending in a French victory (a bit of a surprise, since in my experience, the French almost always lose in French & Indian War games); followed by One Hour World War II from Worthington, ending in an Axis victory.

[aramis]

The most recent plays of min are:
Fortune and Glory
Starfarers of Catan
Ticket to Ride: Europe
Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails.

All games I've loved for years, tho I only recently acquired F&G with the reprint's release.

[Malchor]

More Arcs.

If any of you are in the NYC area or visiting and can swing by Brooklyn, I'd be happy to have you as a guess at the club here, Metropolitan Wargamers.

[rredmond]

That's interesting! I drive through Brooklyn from Jersey to visit friends and family on the Island. Good to know you and your crew are there!

[stevemitchell]

Battle of Quebec 1759 from The Historical Gaming Company. The French and British fight to a draw outside the walls of Quebec.

[stevemitchell]

Cruel Necessity from Worthington. This is a revised and upgraded edition of a game originally published by Victory Point, covering the English Civil Wars. It's a solitaire game, in which you control the forces of Parliament and Puritanism, while the "system" controls the Royalist side. By the end of my game, the King still held onto his head, and his crown, although he was leading the fight from Scotland. But the rebels maintained control of London and enough of the rest of England to claim a minor victory. Very interesting approach to a complex subject.

[aramis]

Wed, due to player outage, did boardgames... TTR: Nordic Countries, TTR London, and Fortune and Glory
Thursday, did SFB, Hana Awase, and Mah Jongg.
As for SFB, used cadet cruisers, Fed c/CA vs Rom c/WE. Was teaching the game. Turned out a little bit more Romulan victory than the TOS episode Balance of Terror... But the hook seems set.

[stevemitchell]

I played two Civil War titles from the Musket & Saber "Mini Game" series from Decision Games. The Union won a major victory at Wilson's Creek, while Salem's Church ended in a draw.

[Parzival]

Return to HORRIFIED to try out the new World of Monsters variant (WoM). Although this one features Cthulhu, I started with the Sphinx and the Chinese ghost whose name I can’t recall… jingsomething.
The Sphinx’s “riddle” is basically a simple sudoku puzzle, based on the value of the items placed in an array. The ghost’s challenge is to build a “coin sword” out of some uniquely shaped tokens, again with the value of items being tied to what pieces you can use.

WoM uses the same card and icon system of Greek Monsters, which makes monsters far more active than in the previous games. Plus there are some nasty events triggered by cards which are a bit more subdued in the first two games in the series. The Sphinx is a particularly troublesome foe as his “!”die result forces the heroes to discard two matched value items or suffer a Horror track advance— and the loss of items takes its toll on advancing the monster challenges.
I was able to take out the ghost, and was one hero’s turn away from slaying the Sphinx when a Monster Card placed him on a hero, and the diced rolled two hits and a !. And that was that.

I’ll try again to experience the Yeti and Cthulhu monsters.

[Falconer]

Recent plays:

The Hobbit Adventure Boardgame
Firefly: The Game
War of the Ring
Twilight Imperium

I also acquired Civilization and can’t wait to give it a try.

[Parzival]

Nov 22, 2024 20:16:59 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Recent plays:

The Hobbit Adventure Boardgame
Firefly: The Game
War of the Ring
Twilight Imperium

I also acquired Civilization and can’t wait to give it a try.

I have Firefly, which may be the most incredible-looking board game I own— especially the play money, which is absolutely stunning. Alas, I’ve never gotten to play it. My wife and I are the only Firefly fans we know, and she’s not a gamer. I suppose you can play the game without knowing the show— it’s well done that way— but ya still gotta “sell” it to others. And if you can’t crack jokes like “My days of not taking you seriously are definitely coming to a middle,” and “Oh no! What could it beee? Who’s flying this thing? Oh, yeah. Well, back to work,” you’re missing out on half of the appeal!

[aramis]

Nov 23, 2024 14:44:34 GMT -6 Parzival said:

Nov 22, 2024 20:16:59 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Recent plays:

The Hobbit Adventure Boardgame
Firefly: The Game
War of the Ring
Twilight Imperium

I also acquired Civilization and can’t wait to give it a try.

I have Firefly, which may be the most incredible-looking board game I own— especially the play money, which is absolutely stunning. Alas, I’ve never gotten to play it. My wife and I are the only Firefly fans we know, and she’s not a gamer. I suppose you can play the game without knowing the show— it’s well done that way— but ya still gotta “sell” it to others. And if you can’t crack jokes like “My days of not taking you seriously are definitely coming to a middle,” and “Oh no! What could it beee? Who’s flying this thing? Oh, yeah. Well, back to work,” you’re missing out on half of the appeal!

It plays QUITE well! The expansions integrate well, too... one of the best adaptations out there, and it borders on RPGing.

ETA: Oh, and it also plays well solo... see how long you can go before you go broke...

[Parzival]

Horrified: Greek Monsters back in the rotation. First time playing against Cerberus as one of the monsters— he’s a tough beast. His special power is to flip over the top card of the Monster deck, thus stealing time away from the players. That is made more complicated as he’s one whose lair has to be revealed, so you can’t start knocking him down right away. For this game he was teamed up with the Siren and the Chimera (the latter has a lair, too). I defeated the Chimera rather quickly (found his lair on the first lair check). The Siren was mostly a matter of finding enough blue and green items to defeat her challenge; not that difficult. But I wound up getting down to the last Monster card, with Cerberus the last monster. Fortunately, I was overloaded with perks that helped a lot. In the end I had 6 points on the Terror track (one more and you lose), and the final card played… but I loaded up the last Hero with the items to solve the puzzle and send Cerberus back to Hades where he belongs. (So basically, I helped a lost puppy get home.) It was a certainly down to the wire.
I typically play solo using three heroes, which I think is the game’s sweet spot. More heroes and you start advancing the card clock, while each hero’s opportunity to act is further separated by other heroes’ turns.

Also played Tom Wham’s classic The Awful Green Things From Outer Space, the silliest not-Alien alien intruder game ever (and the best, IMHO). If you’re not familiar with the game, it involves one player controlling the crew of a spaceship (all lower-case aliens, and very Trek like), while the other attempts to infest their spaceship with the titular creatures— who of course see the crew as lunch. The crew must test various tools and other objects lying around the ship to see which will kill the AGTs— and which of these only make matters worse!
While not intended as a solo game, it’s easy to do— either play both sides as intelligently as possible, or use dice to roll randomly as to what the Awful Green Things do. Their decision tree is fairly basic. Roll to see which form “grows”. Roll to see which way they move (Even, move that way, odd this way…). For attacks, even, gang up, odd attack separately… etc.)
At first things looked bleak— the area of effect items (Comm Beamer, Gas Grenades, and Fire Extinguishers) all produced 1d6 fragments (the horror!). But the rocket fuel got five dice to stun (which covered up for the first disastrous fragmentation result, preventing me from having a ship full of hungry baby AGTs), and the Stun Pistol gave me a 4 dice to kill range weapon, and the Hypodermic Needle proved to be a 5 dice to kill item. So Stun, move in to kill, wrap up really quickly. I wound up only losing one crewman! (I did use the random GT action approach, which helped somewhat, but the stun effect from the Rocket Fuel prevented the GTs from spreading or growing at crucial turns.) If you’ve never played, you owe it to yourself to try this silly (but challenging) tactical boardgame. Alas, this appears to be out of print again. Hopefully SJG will bring it back.

[Falconer]

My wife and I play Firefly with another couple. We’re all fans of the show. It’s a great board game, truly a lot of fun with a lot of variety and interesting and exciting stuff to do. I think someone who has not seen the show would enjoy the game. The game is so well designed that it sometimes feels like the show is a tie-in with the game rather than the other way around. Highly recommended! I know what you mean, aramis, about “borders on RPGing.” I tried the actual RPG and it was very lame. The board game is the far superior way to scratch that itch.

[aramis]

Nov 25, 2024 21:56:48 GMT -6 Falconer said:

My wife and I play Firefly with another couple. We’re all fans of the show. It’s a great board game, truly a lot of fun with a lot of variety and interesting and exciting stuff to do. I think someone who has not seen the show would enjoy the game. The game is so well designed that it sometimes feels like the show is a tie-in with the game rather than the other way around. Highly recommended! I know what you mean, aramis, about “borders on RPGing.” I tried the actual RPG and it was very lame. The board game is the far superior way to scratch that itch.

Which one? Serenity or Firefly...
if it was the Serenity RPG, then yeah, it's bad.
Firefly, however, with a group that can make the playstyle shift for Cortex Plus, is awesome.