Scott Tortorice
Senior Member
Thanks. Still not there yet, but getting better day by day. No game play for me to report, though.
What Boardgame Have You Played Recently?
- Thread starter kawaiku
- Start date
kawaiku
Member
Soooo I got some more gaming done recently and bought myself an expansion for a previously owned yet, sadly, unplayed game :shy: NONETHELESS!!!
Alhambra: Big Box (Updated version of the game + expansions)
This game was very fun and just as surprising as Lords of Waterdeep! While it's not a Euro or a worker placement game (which tend to be Euro games lol), it is normally different from my usually interests in games... possibly. It's a mixture of card drawing, tile placement, strategy, and point gathering. In the picture below you use the colored cards to buy tiles placed in the boxes on the small playing mat (next to the green bag). Each tile has a number on it that signifies how much this card costs. So a tile in the box next to the orange coin with a number 13 on it can only be bought buy orange cards totaling 13 or more. You can then place the tile if you like or put away to be used later on the player's sheet (that little rectangular thing next to the blue card on the bottom left). However, the tiles have to connect to open segments of other tiles. Also, you must build a continuous wall along the edges of your playing area (the thick black edges of the tiles) and these are counted at the end as bonus points. Each tile is also colored differently and whoever has the most of each color at the end of every phase gets the most points for that round. So I have 4 green tiles and my friend has 3, I get 18 points and he only gets 9. In the top left you can see a point tracker and this is where you can keep track of your points. While that description is probably confusing, the game is surprisingly easy to grasp but once you begin playing with other players you begin planning out strategies that are possibly giving you several different options as well as taking in moves ahead.
We played 2 games and while I totally won both! It was actually never clear cut until we began counting the scores at the end of the game. Both of us just had no idea how either one of us was doing until we began counting. A really fun game and I honestly think that next to Small World, it's a great introductory board game.
View attachment 48466
Small World
This charming game is what I personally like to dub, fantasy-Risk. You and about 5-6 other people battle it out for domination using a completely randomized variety of races and abilities. Each person at the beginning sees if they have the pointiest ears, the one who does not only gets to pick their race-ability combo first but also goes first. So you can have ransacking vampires, diplomatic trolls, or spirit pixies and much MUCH MORE! (There are a lot of races and new combos added with many expansions. Like a TON!) You all begin on a board edge and just begin to conquer everything. It takes 2 tiles to take an empty space and then if it's occupied, say by 2 enemies, then that takes 4 tiles, 2 for the space and 1 extra tile for each opponent's tile. Mountains also require an extra tile so that could end up making you use far more tiles than you would like! And the abilities only add more chaos to the chaos! You gain money buy taking out your friends and use it to buy other race-ability combos after you decide to put your current race-ability combo into decline. What this means is that you remove all of you tiles from the board save for one in each occupied space and flip them to a grey side that denotes that they are in decline. They still earn you points for occupying those spaces in following turns but, they are no longer able to be played unless an ability allows you too. After everyone goes you pick or buy a new race-ability combo and start rampaging all over again!
In my game I went first and picked ransacking Orcs!!
The Orcs natural ability allowed them to gain 1 coin for every enemy occupied space they conquered and the ransacking allowed me to get +1 to that on top of earning a coin at the end of my turn. Thus, if I conquered 3 spaces each occupied buy enemies, I would gain 9 coins!! Awesome! Suffice to say I never went into decline and proceeded to destroy one of my friends so completely and chomp up the others quite seriously as well. Got 2nd place but great times! Everyone hated me and my orcs by the end lmao! But I rebuttled, "dats wuts orces du bes! Day iz day mean'st, green'st, bruuts day iz!"
View attachment 48467
Alhambra: Big Box (Updated version of the game + expansions)
This game was very fun and just as surprising as Lords of Waterdeep! While it's not a Euro or a worker placement game (which tend to be Euro games lol), it is normally different from my usually interests in games... possibly. It's a mixture of card drawing, tile placement, strategy, and point gathering. In the picture below you use the colored cards to buy tiles placed in the boxes on the small playing mat (next to the green bag). Each tile has a number on it that signifies how much this card costs. So a tile in the box next to the orange coin with a number 13 on it can only be bought buy orange cards totaling 13 or more. You can then place the tile if you like or put away to be used later on the player's sheet (that little rectangular thing next to the blue card on the bottom left). However, the tiles have to connect to open segments of other tiles. Also, you must build a continuous wall along the edges of your playing area (the thick black edges of the tiles) and these are counted at the end as bonus points. Each tile is also colored differently and whoever has the most of each color at the end of every phase gets the most points for that round. So I have 4 green tiles and my friend has 3, I get 18 points and he only gets 9. In the top left you can see a point tracker and this is where you can keep track of your points. While that description is probably confusing, the game is surprisingly easy to grasp but once you begin playing with other players you begin planning out strategies that are possibly giving you several different options as well as taking in moves ahead.
We played 2 games and while I totally won both! It was actually never clear cut until we began counting the scores at the end of the game. Both of us just had no idea how either one of us was doing until we began counting. A really fun game and I honestly think that next to Small World, it's a great introductory board game.
View attachment 48466
Small World
This charming game is what I personally like to dub, fantasy-Risk. You and about 5-6 other people battle it out for domination using a completely randomized variety of races and abilities. Each person at the beginning sees if they have the pointiest ears, the one who does not only gets to pick their race-ability combo first but also goes first. So you can have ransacking vampires, diplomatic trolls, or spirit pixies and much MUCH MORE! (There are a lot of races and new combos added with many expansions. Like a TON!) You all begin on a board edge and just begin to conquer everything. It takes 2 tiles to take an empty space and then if it's occupied, say by 2 enemies, then that takes 4 tiles, 2 for the space and 1 extra tile for each opponent's tile. Mountains also require an extra tile so that could end up making you use far more tiles than you would like! And the abilities only add more chaos to the chaos! You gain money buy taking out your friends and use it to buy other race-ability combos after you decide to put your current race-ability combo into decline. What this means is that you remove all of you tiles from the board save for one in each occupied space and flip them to a grey side that denotes that they are in decline. They still earn you points for occupying those spaces in following turns but, they are no longer able to be played unless an ability allows you too. After everyone goes you pick or buy a new race-ability combo and start rampaging all over again!
In my game I went first and picked ransacking Orcs!!
The Orcs natural ability allowed them to gain 1 coin for every enemy occupied space they conquered and the ransacking allowed me to get +1 to that on top of earning a coin at the end of my turn. Thus, if I conquered 3 spaces each occupied buy enemies, I would gain 9 coins!! Awesome! Suffice to say I never went into decline and proceeded to destroy one of my friends so completely and chomp up the others quite seriously as well. Got 2nd place but great times! Everyone hated me and my orcs by the end lmao! But I rebuttled, "dats wuts orces du bes! Day iz day mean'st, green'st, bruuts day iz!" View attachment 48467
kawaiku
Member
Lastly, I picked up this bad boy using a gift card at my FLGS! Though I have yet had no time to bust the base out, I couldn't resist. It was this expansion or Fantasy Flights' boardgame interpretation of Sid Meier's Civilization (which looks and sounds fantastic!)
Space Empires 4x: Close Encounters!
It adds a LOT of stuff to the base game while also providing new, thicker counters that you can replace the base game's with!
Also, a picture of me in the middle of playing Alhambra.
View attachment 48471
Space Empires 4x: Close Encounters!
It adds a LOT of stuff to the base game while also providing new, thicker counters that you can replace the base game's with!
View attachment 48470
Also, a picture of me in the middle of playing Alhambra.
View attachment 48471
kynken
Senior Member
Great War at Sea focusing o WWII by Avalanche Press
Chris Netherton
Member
We had a boardgaming session over the bank holiday weekend. We played Alchemists, Formula D, Mice and Mystics and Sheriff of Nottingham.
The last two games we had played before, Mice & Mystics is essentially a dungeon crawler themed around characters that may been turned into mice, and the baddies are things like cockroaches, rats, and centipedes. The big boss is of course a cat. There's quite a strong story element to it, but to be honest we just played the game. We had tried this at Christmas and it took us ages to get past the first level, and although we had four attempts we failed to make it past the second level this time round. I guess we must be missing a trick, because apparently level three is the hard one. Still it would be boring if it was easy, right?
Sheriff of Nottingham is basically about lying to your friends! Shut Up & Sit Down describe it as 'Customs the game', which is a pretty good analogy. You can put up to five cards into a sealed bag and you then declare to one player who is playing the Sheriff for that turn what's in the bag (4 chickens, 3 cheese etc). There are four legal goods and then a whole host of contraband, the only thing you have to be honest about is the number of the cards in the bag. You are also free to try and bribe the Sheriff to not open your bag, or to open someone else's. If the Sheriff decides to open your bag and you've been lying you have to pay a fine based on the value of the stuff you've been telling porkies about. If you've been telling the truth then the Sheriff has to cough up. The winner is the player who has the most money, with bonuses for who has the most chickens, cheese, bread etc. It's a good simple game that we've played a few times and really enjoyed.
Formula D is a racing game which was good fun. Although it is a roll the dice and move game, the type of dice you roll (D2, D6, D30 etc) is dependent on what gear you're in and when you corner you have to land a certain number of times within that corner. Your car can take up to 18 damage points before you're out of the race. So if you burn up to a corner within which you had to stop once in sixth and then overshoot it by ten spaces, you take 10 points of damage. You can jam on the brakes to try and land within in a corner, but each space you break loses you more damage. Alternatively you can crash your gears for less damage and roll a lower dice, but then you'll have lost speed and it might take a couple of turns to get back up into a high gear. It's a nice little system that's pretty thematic, naturally making squealing brake noises is mandatory.
Lastly, Alchemists is a game that makes good use of a smart phone app. This is a hybrid guessing-worker placement game. You are try to solve the alchemical properties of eight magic ingredients and then publish (hopefully correct) theories to gain reputation (i.e. victory points). To do this you mix two ingredients by scanning them with your smart phone which produces an alchemical symbol, red positive or negative, green positive or negative etc. There can only be eight different properties, so if you mix two ingredients and get a red positive then you know that neither of these ingredients can be red negative. Essentially it's one of those games that takes about 20 minutes to explain and then nobody really understands whats going on until half way through! Still having said that it was really good fun, and it has this cool action where you can challenge one of your friend's theories, which led me to to dispute and then disprove someone's theory of toads. Myself and the other half played this one a few more times two-player and it seems like it works quite well with two. There is an advanced version that we haven't tried that looks pretty tough so hopefully we'll get some mileage out of it.
The last two games we had played before, Mice & Mystics is essentially a dungeon crawler themed around characters that may been turned into mice, and the baddies are things like cockroaches, rats, and centipedes. The big boss is of course a cat. There's quite a strong story element to it, but to be honest we just played the game. We had tried this at Christmas and it took us ages to get past the first level, and although we had four attempts we failed to make it past the second level this time round. I guess we must be missing a trick, because apparently level three is the hard one. Still it would be boring if it was easy, right?
Sheriff of Nottingham is basically about lying to your friends! Shut Up & Sit Down describe it as 'Customs the game', which is a pretty good analogy. You can put up to five cards into a sealed bag and you then declare to one player who is playing the Sheriff for that turn what's in the bag (4 chickens, 3 cheese etc). There are four legal goods and then a whole host of contraband, the only thing you have to be honest about is the number of the cards in the bag. You are also free to try and bribe the Sheriff to not open your bag, or to open someone else's. If the Sheriff decides to open your bag and you've been lying you have to pay a fine based on the value of the stuff you've been telling porkies about. If you've been telling the truth then the Sheriff has to cough up. The winner is the player who has the most money, with bonuses for who has the most chickens, cheese, bread etc. It's a good simple game that we've played a few times and really enjoyed.
Formula D is a racing game which was good fun. Although it is a roll the dice and move game, the type of dice you roll (D2, D6, D30 etc) is dependent on what gear you're in and when you corner you have to land a certain number of times within that corner. Your car can take up to 18 damage points before you're out of the race. So if you burn up to a corner within which you had to stop once in sixth and then overshoot it by ten spaces, you take 10 points of damage. You can jam on the brakes to try and land within in a corner, but each space you break loses you more damage. Alternatively you can crash your gears for less damage and roll a lower dice, but then you'll have lost speed and it might take a couple of turns to get back up into a high gear. It's a nice little system that's pretty thematic, naturally making squealing brake noises is mandatory.
Lastly, Alchemists is a game that makes good use of a smart phone app. This is a hybrid guessing-worker placement game. You are try to solve the alchemical properties of eight magic ingredients and then publish (hopefully correct) theories to gain reputation (i.e. victory points). To do this you mix two ingredients by scanning them with your smart phone which produces an alchemical symbol, red positive or negative, green positive or negative etc. There can only be eight different properties, so if you mix two ingredients and get a red positive then you know that neither of these ingredients can be red negative. Essentially it's one of those games that takes about 20 minutes to explain and then nobody really understands whats going on until half way through! Still having said that it was really good fun, and it has this cool action where you can challenge one of your friend's theories, which led me to to dispute and then disprove someone's theory of toads. Myself and the other half played this one a few more times two-player and it seems like it works quite well with two. There is an advanced version that we haven't tried that looks pretty tough so hopefully we'll get some mileage out of it.
aryianna
Recruit
Waterdeep, the City of Splendors – the most resplendent jewel in the Forgotten Realms, and a den of political intrigue and shady back-alley dealings. In this game, the players are powerful lords vying for control of this great city. Its treasures and resources are ripe for the taking, and that which cannot be gained through trickery and negotiation must be taken by force!
In Lords of Waterdeep, a strategy board game for 2-5 players, you take on the role of one of the masked Lords of Waterdeep, secret rulers of the city. Through your agents, you recruit adventurers to go on quests on your behalf, earning rewards and increasing your influence over the city. Expand the city by purchasing new buildings that open up new actions on the board, and hinder – or help – the other lords by playing Intrigue cards to enact your carefully laid plans.
7 Wonders During the course of play, you may gain points or resources through completing quests, constructing buildings, playing intrigue cards or having other players utilize the buildings you have constructed. At the end of 8 rounds of play, the player who has accrued the most points wins the game.
You are the leader of one of the 7 great cities of the Ancient World. Gather resources, develop commercial routes, and affirm your military supremacy. Build your city and erect an architectural wonder which will transcend future times.
7 Wonders lasts three ages. In each age, players receive seven cards from a particular deck, choose one of those cards, then pass the remainder to an adjacent player. Players reveal their cards simultaneously, paying resources if needed or collecting resources or interacting with other players in various ways. (Players have individual boards with special powers on which to organize their cards, and the boards are double-sided). Each player then chooses another card from the deck they were passed, and the process repeats until players have six cards in play from that age. After three ages, the game ends.
In essence, 7 Wonders is a card development game. Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases. Some provide military strength to overpower your neighbors and others give nothing but victory points. Each card is played immediately after being drafted, so you'll know which cards your neighbor is receiving and how his choices might affect what you've already built up. Cards are passed left-right-left over the three ages, so you need to keep an eye on the neighbors in both directions.
Though the box of earlier editions is listed as being for 3–7 players, there is an official 2-player variant included in the instructions.
In Lords of Waterdeep, a strategy board game for 2-5 players, you take on the role of one of the masked Lords of Waterdeep, secret rulers of the city. Through your agents, you recruit adventurers to go on quests on your behalf, earning rewards and increasing your influence over the city. Expand the city by purchasing new buildings that open up new actions on the board, and hinder – or help – the other lords by playing Intrigue cards to enact your carefully laid plans.
7 Wonders During the course of play, you may gain points or resources through completing quests, constructing buildings, playing intrigue cards or having other players utilize the buildings you have constructed. At the end of 8 rounds of play, the player who has accrued the most points wins the game.
You are the leader of one of the 7 great cities of the Ancient World. Gather resources, develop commercial routes, and affirm your military supremacy. Build your city and erect an architectural wonder which will transcend future times.
7 Wonders lasts three ages. In each age, players receive seven cards from a particular deck, choose one of those cards, then pass the remainder to an adjacent player. Players reveal their cards simultaneously, paying resources if needed or collecting resources or interacting with other players in various ways. (Players have individual boards with special powers on which to organize their cards, and the boards are double-sided). Each player then chooses another card from the deck they were passed, and the process repeats until players have six cards in play from that age. After three ages, the game ends.
In essence, 7 Wonders is a card development game. Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases. Some provide military strength to overpower your neighbors and others give nothing but victory points. Each card is played immediately after being drafted, so you'll know which cards your neighbor is receiving and how his choices might affect what you've already built up. Cards are passed left-right-left over the three ages, so you need to keep an eye on the neighbors in both directions.
Though the box of earlier editions is listed as being for 3–7 players, there is an official 2-player variant included in the instructions.
prymus
Member
Lets see if we can liven this thread up a bit. With it being the so called golden age of boardgames this shouldn't be tuff. I recently purchased some board and card games that we( the family) think have been enjoyable. Munchkin, Bohnanza, Coup, all card games and a lot of fun. Bang! The Dice game, which we have really enjoyed. Dead of Winter(my wife hates and my daughter loves) Manhattan Project, Pandemic, Sky Traders, The Castles of Mad King Ludwig. We haven't played Sky Traders yet but it looks fun. All the others are very enjoyable for the whole family. My son has spent a couple game nights with us and brought Tokaido and Forbidden Island which are both very fun. Dead of Winter has been very tuff to beat, Pandemic a lot of fun, Sushi Go is a fun card game we've played a couple times. TCoMKL is fun and different to games I've played before and we like it a lot. There is so much available and more being produced almost daily. There are still about a half dozen or so games I'd like to get. Bought The Lord of the Rings Adventure Board Game and really want to like it but some things I can not find addressed in the rules bother me. Might look for a better Lord of the Rings/Hobbit game. So what has everyone else been up to?
Eisenschwein
Recruit
Love when spring comes so we can go to second hand markets - always some nice boardgames around there.
Played Thurn und Taxis lately - a game where you have to establish mail-delivery-routes through south germany and its surroundings. 50 % card drawing luck, 50 % strategy.
Played Thurn und Taxis lately - a game where you have to establish mail-delivery-routes through south germany and its surroundings. 50 % card drawing luck, 50 % strategy.
Mustang2.0
Member
Finally have some time to get started with the GMT Games Next War series. I want to start with Next War: Taiwan but the airborne and amphibious rules may be too much, so I'll give Next War: Korea a go first.
prymus
Member
I've been playing La Bataille de Mt St. Jean, the Plancenoit scenario. Also been constructing several print and play free dl games on the La Bataille website. Finished up the Teugn Hausen module yesterday getting my map and started working on the counters for the Raab module today. The counters for the Raab module are very nicely done and the backs line up very well to the fronts. Eager to get this one on the table. If you have not played any La Bataille series games the dl games are a great way to give the system a try, especially if you like Napoleonic battles.
Brett Loves Board Games
Recruit
Hi, I'm new to the forum and thought this thread was a good place to dive in! The latest game I've played is called Hive. A great little 2 player game that only lasts 20 minutes or so. It kind of reminds me of Othello, in that it only takes 5 minutes to learn but there are so many permutations of how to play and how to win that you can play it over and over and still learn some new stuff. I'll be making a list of any games in this thread I haven't tried yet!
Jeffrey D Myers
Senior Member
Wir Sind Das Volk! was the latest one for me. Fascinating two-player economic wargame between East and West Germanies.
Proff3RTR
Elder Member
Played a few scenario from AH's Tobruk, got it cheap (£10) from E-bay, I like it, sorta like Panzer lite, I am in the process of making my own 1" counters and map to match, also am making status markers etc and redoing the charts to update it for my own use.
A sample M3 Grant & Pz IVe
all the best
Perry
A sample M3 Grant & Pz IVe
all the best
Perry
Mora Kelsie
Recruit
what else? Monopoly! All time favorite
Paul_RS
Elder Member
SCS Panzer Battles: Chir River
GTS The Devil's Cauldron
GMT Wing leader Supremacy
and the 2 player version of RAF
All very enjoyable
GTS The Devil's Cauldron
GMT Wing leader Supremacy
and the 2 player version of RAF
All very enjoyable
Proff3RTR
Elder Member
Paul_RS
Elder Member
Perry,
500m per hex, companies and battalions. The chit draw mechanism is new for the SCS system. It is a low complexity wargame, but gets you into tactics very quickly. The two mappers will take around 10 hours of solid play once familiar with the rules.
Worth it? Yes, by and large. It isn't OCS but doesn't pretend to be. Lack of 'Chrome' may frustrate some but I enjoyed playing the game.
Cheers
Paul
Proff3RTR
Elder Member
Cheers Paul,
This might end up on my 'To Buy' list, once I have re-acquired all the Combat Commander system (had all except Pacific and sold it all for funds for Korsun Pocket last year!).
all the best mate
Perry
Paul_RS
Elder Member
Bastogne is another good SCS module. I also have 'It Never Snows' but have yet to play that one.
Tried really hard to like Combat Commander but in the end I sold my modules. As alternative to ASL I prefer the Lock n Load games.
Cheers
Paul
Proff3RTR
Elder Member
That is why I sold all mine off last year Paul, I am for some reason regretting it now, so am on a quest to get hold of the whole lot again (this time with Med Commander and Pacific Commander), I have found of late I am slowly slipping away from ASL, still love it, but it is not drawing me as much as it used to (ever since Jeff disappeared mysteriously during our VASL Singling CG to be honest), I think it will be a game I can just dip in and out of as it were as I am liking all the other WW2 board/map games out there to much.
It never snows in September appeals to me I have to admit, I managed to grab a VG copy of VG games Hell's Highway (another of my past buys and chucks) the other day, and it has reignited my Market Garden interest, And the book of the same name is a very goo read, nice to see MG from Fritz's PoV for a change.
Many thanks Paul.
Perry