What boardgames have you played recently?

vetsurg

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I love the Next War series by GMT (India-Pakistan, Korea, Taiwan, Poland, and VietNam). They play very well solo. Currently playing Next War: Poland.
 

Robin Reeve

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I am rediscovering Pathfinder the Card Game, which had been sleeping in a cupboard for about seven years.
I am enjoying a solo campaign.
The game is simple, and the characters' progression is at just the right rythm.
Here, my rogue dwarf and my priestess have beaten the leader of hordes of living dead scarecrows and cursed golems.

18542
 

Paul_RS

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Well, I find myself getting back into ASL. Not that I ever stopped playing, but the enthusiasm I had for the system had waned over the years. It didn’t grab me the way it did 10 years ago. Pleased to announce that the enthusiasm has returned and I’m now enjoying a revival of my love for the game. Looks like I could be getting around 7 hours a week live play time via VASL against some pretty impressive players. Looking forward to it.

Meanwhile I’m continuing to enjoy my first La Batt game as the fight for the crossroads at Quatre Bras approaches a tipping point at 5 in the afternoon. The French infantry, after some early gains against the Dutch Belgian infantry, are now struggling against a rapidly strengthening British/Allied line. Kellerman is being urged on by Ney as Wellington rushes around his brigade leaders issuing orders like a man possessed. The French can only look on in dismay as they see a column of British guards, in the form of 2 brigades, approaching from Nivelles. A battalion of Dutch Belgians continues to hang on for grim death in Gemioncourt. Are the French running out of steam?

Also playing another game of Red Storm. Warsaw Pact have the numbers and rolling two lots of MiG 29s has certainly helped me survive thus far against some excellent play by my opponent Jeff, who has been very patient correcting my rules errors during the game. Very much a scenario of quality versus quantity as we battle it out over the skies on central Germany in 1985.
This retirement lark is turning out to be to be quite good from a gaming perspective.
 
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TopT

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I picked up Pavlov's House and played it for the first time two nights ago. I will not be awarded a 'Hero of the Motherland, but I will get shot by the NKVD! :)

The game seems pretty decent, and it is easy to pick up the play. They have a whole series of games based on this format.
 

Paul_RS

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our game of Quatre Bras using the La Batt system eventually petered out into a draw with neither side in a position to secure a substantial victory or concede the field. Great learning experience, lots to get to grips with, took an age to play using PBEM.

We are now embarking on Rising Eagles, The Battle of Austerlitz, using the Eagles of France system from Hexasim games. Not our first outing into the system having played a couple of scenarios from the Ligny module a year or so ago. Nice system, clean, much, much simpler than La Batt. Fog of war applies in the first few turns as the protagonists move up to contact. So far shaping up to be a great gaming experience.

Also getting back into Wing Leader, from GMT. Played our first 3 refresher scenarios last Monday with another session planned for this Friday. I was bit Luke warm on the system when it first came out but have since warmed to it. Switch from plan to elevation mode as gaming concept took a while to assimilate and the map is, by necessity, utterly bland but the counters are works of art. Not an overly complex system, but there is significant depth and there are multiple choices to be made to make the most of the aircraft you are given. Most scenarios are relatively quick to play, the smaller ones can easily be completed in under an hour. Campaign games are available which add an additional dimension in terms of bigger picture objectives.

cheers

Paul
 
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Robin Reeve

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Having a lot of fun these days with Thunderstone Quest.
Using a solo variant which is much less stressful and much closer to the competitive mode than the official Barricades one.
I would say that this is my favourite deckbuilder - I also loved Thunderstone 1st. ed. a lot.
 

Paul_RS

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Playing DAK2 from the Gamers Operational Combat Series. The core rules are just over 40 pages and the mechanics are not difficult to grasp but you could spend a lifetime mastering the game. The depth and subtleties are what I would describe as masterpiece in game design.
Cheers

Paul
 

fenyan

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Victory at Midway (Command Magazine) using rules from Solomon Sea. This is a double-blind game where both players have maps and a screen is set up between them. The Japanese CAP was effective against the US strike, the few dive bombers that got through missed their targets. A sub did torpedo the Soryu, sinking it. A few hours later, the Japanese found the US task forces and sunk one carrier and damaged another. The remaining Yorktown did not have enough airpower remaining and withdrew from the battle.

What's great about the Solomon Sea system is its Search Path system. It's much simpler than Flat Top and much more realistic than Midway. A PBY Catalina for example has five legs of its planned flight and you place a counter for each leg. Unfortunately this game and its sister Bay of Bengal are scarce, being published in small runs by small companies Simulations Workshop in 2000 and Chris Harding Simulations in 2015. Victory at Midway itself is a bit easier to find relatively speaking.
 

Faded 8-1

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VaM - Great game! Me and my buddy played it a couple times but I never got a chance to play it as much as I would have liked.

Ben Knight never failed to produce good - great games.

XTR/Command Games
VaM - Victory at Midway - Great Game
ViN - Victory in Normandy - Great Game (the limited-activations-per-turn system doesn't work as well after break-out though - recommend any of the 3 short scenarios)
AtP - Across the Potomac - Good Game

Atlantic Storm & Admirals Edition
Haven't played them, but tourney-level players I trust really like them. No reason to believe they aren't excellent games.
 

Paul_RS

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Been busy over the last10 months.

OCS, more DAK and the Campaign game from Smolensk, OCS continues to impress. Works well via PBEM where there would otherwise be a lot of downtime for the non moving player. Planning your moves and organising your logistics can, literally, take hours. An utterly absorbing system.

Then onto Patton’s Vanguard, an area movement game covering the battle of Arracourt, nice little game, relatively quick playing, very tough to secure a German win. You need to choreograph your moves carefully and hope the dice gods are kind to you. If the US player gets air support, it’s pretty much all over. Sold the game on eBay. Good game, but has limited replay value.

Then onto BCS. This is system I’ve been keen to break into. Lots of new concepts, the initial learning curve is quite steep as you will need to abandon some of the more traditional wargaming concepts. But boy, is it worth it. We’ve played 5 scenarios from Arracourt and are now moving back to the desert for Brazen Chariots.

SCS North Africa, a gem of a game. Think of it as DAK lite and you’ll get the idea.

Finally, embarked on a live VASSAL, multiplayer game of a Time for Trumpets. There's a lot of time specific and side specific chrome over the first couple of days that seems to put a lot of players off the game (make no mistake though, it's still a monster) but that eases considerably by around day 3. The rules appear more dense than they actually are once you delve into the detail you'll find there is lot of repetition as part of the writing style adopted by the designer. There's been a fair bit of errata and clarification since the game was published so I'd recommend printing out the latest version of the living rules from the GMT game support page.

After a 6 month sabbatical from ASL I’m back to playing 2 live scenarios a month via Skype/VASSAL. 👍🏻
 
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