What boardgames have you played recently?

[Bill Cirillo]

Had a couple of days off between Christmas and New Years. Made the most of them playing multiple games of:

Terraforming Mars with the Lexus/Nexus board expansions and the new Venus Next expansion. The Venus Next expansion adds quite a bit of goodness to an already great game.

Orleans. Really well constructed Worker Placement game that stays fresh given the number of expansions that are available for the game. Great artwork and very high quality components. Highly recommended.

The Voyages of Marco Polo. Worker traveler, dice driven game set during the age of Marco Polo. I really enjoyed the game mechanics but one needs to be comfortable with the range of variability in rolling 5+ dice per Round. The system worked well in my opinion, but that feeling was not shared by all of the participants. Beautiful board layout and quality components.

Great Western Trail. Awesome way to spend two hours driving cattle to Kansas City and then shipping them to points west.

I've said for the last few years that we definitely live in a Golden Age of board gaming and IMO all of the above games help reinforce that argument.

Other games seeing play included:

Ra. Always a great, relatively quick moving game.
NMBR 9. Highly enjoyable, super quick puzzle game.
Kingdomino. Fun, quick little filler game.

For those interested, in order to play a slightly quicker version, we played a three-player game of Terraforming Mars wherein each player controlled two Corporations at game start (1 Venus Corp. and 1 "standard" corp). Makes for a pretty fun TM experience as our game had final scores of 100, 100, 80+.

Also, had a chance last month to play 1914, Serbien muß Sterbien. Highly enjoyable experience with a pretty clean system that has much in common with the better aspects of MMP's GCACW series of games.

 

[jrv]

Great Western Trail. Awesome way to spend two hours driving cattle to Kansas City and then shipping them to points west.

I would think it would be more profitable to ship them to points east, but I admit I know little about the cattle business in the nineteenth century.

JR

 

[djohannsen]

Also, had a chance last month to play 1914, Serbien muß Sterbien. Highly enjoyable experience with a pretty clean system that has much in common with the better aspects of MMP's GCACW series of games.

Funny, but, as I own old versions, I've always thought of it as AH's GCACW series. Anyhow, thanks for the pointer to 1914, Serbien muß Sterbien, I'll look into this one.

 

[Bill Cirillo]

I would think it would be more profitable to ship them to points east, but I admit I know little about the cattle business in the nineteenth century.

JR

Clearly!

 

[Eagle4ty]

I would think it would be more profitable to ship them to points east, but I admit I know little about the cattle business in the nineteenth century.

JR

Perhaps they started in Indiana and shipped them to Chicago! Ah, the tales of those great Indiana cattle drives! (or was it Ohio?)

 

[c600g]

Over my brief holiday vacation, the entire family gave my son's game, Betrayal at Baldur's Gate a try. I think we'll need to give this one another chance and perhaps I should go over the rules and not rely on my youngest for this matter. ;>

Then, we broke out a family classic - Bang! (with a bunch of expansions). A great game with some outrageous western accents thrown in for good measure. Sergio Leone would have been proud.

 

[Philippe D.]

I played Bang! some years ago, and it was very fun. Isn't it an Italian game? (a number of the players were Italians and they seemed to believe it was a national game - plus, Sergio Leone, as you said)

A very different kind of game that I often play with some colleagues is a German cattle-trading game called Kuhhandel. It's a classic among us - every year we have this week in the spring where we meet in southern France for conferences and talks, and every year we have lots of games of Kuhhandel. It's a card game where you buy animals from each other in auctions, and the fun part is that some trading is with hidden money - you don't know how much you're getting. With people in the right state of mind (a little wine or beer may help), it's extremely funny (5 players recommended).

 

[c600g]

Yes it is, Philippe. That's one of the fun things about the game is that many of the cards have Italian titles with English subtitles, so when another player shoots at you via a Bang! card, you can smile and scream out "Mancato" (missed) as you play that card. It is best played with 4 or more players, and can handle quite a few more than that.

 

[Mister T]

Played (or rather learn the ropes to play) Fallen Eagles, a Napoleonic game depicting the battle of Waterloo. Yet another game on this battle? Yes, but the French author, being himself a (good) ASL player, has instilled some ASL mechanics into what remains largely a game based on standard napoleonic rules. Each unit has a morale factor useful when undertaking some tasks. As i am very much interested into the battle and disappointed by what i saw thus far on the market (too big, too complex, too unwiedly, too simple), it seems that this game may well float my boat.

Napoleon is a 11-3 leader. Before one says this reeks of favoritism, Blücher and Wellington are 11-2

Attached the French D'Erlon Corps ready to attack

 

[Thunderchief]

Created a log for my T2 assaults as the Allies in S&T 89's Sicily: The Race for Messina. I have not played it for about 20 years but am having a good time and a file usually takes me an hour or so to do with the rule lookups - hopefully by the end of it I'll be up to speed and ready to try one of the other S&T West Wall series of games. Still love the old games............

 

[witchbottles]

Long Awaited " Phantoms Over Phuc Yen - Chptr 2 - continued.......


"Jimboy" was nervous. Here he was, part of a massive alpha strike, ordered to pound Kep into the dirt in retaliation for the loss of his wingman and mentor last week. After taking off and forming up with an EB-66 flight for SAM jamming, the bomb-laden Thuds racked up in flights of 4, along the course track laid out at the briefing. the Fours were set at top cover, and Iron Hand was being provided by a pair of F-105Fs. Red Crown was reporting all seemed rather quiet over the Red River Valley so far, only a few echo returns of possible MiGs, all far away from the strike package at this point.

Jim breathed a sigh of relief at that news. The memories of the fireball that was his best friend still blinded him every time he closed his eyes. The further away the MiG's, the better. Maybe they were afraid, now that the American's ire was up over that mishap.

"Good". thought Jim. "They deserve to be scared for once."

It was too good to be true, as many things were in the air over North Vietnam these days.......

Steel Tiger Control came on the air:

"Strike Leader, Steel Tiger Control. We are marking 5 SA-2 Radars going active in your vicinity at this time. Repeat 5 SA-2 radars are up and scanning. Gunslinger, respond."

"Affirmative." came Jim's voice. It sounded so hollow. "Copy. The SAM's are wanting some. Good. We got a few eggs for them, too."

"Red Crown to Gunslinger Lead. Multiple bogey tracks vectoring towards your posit at this time. Sandy is up on North SAR - please keep us informed if you intend to vector Sandy in."

"Roger, Red. Gunslinger Lead here. Keeps Sandy up on GUARD for any beacon tracking. Strike ResCAP freq is button 4."

"Roger Gunslinger. Red Crown acknowledges."

"shit." thought Jimboy. Couldn't keep well enough alone, now the whole dame VPAF was on the strike. One thing was for sure, this was going to be another hairy ride "Downtown"........

__________________________________________________________________________________

Jackson and I got off to a slow start on D1 here,there and everywhere. But it looks as if Either Kep or Phuc Yen are the primary strike targets at the end of turn 2, looking at Jackson's strike package route and dogleg so far. A single SAM got a partial aq on an EB-66 accompanying the flight up front, using standoff jamming. If that firms up, you can bet a Guideline will be coming off the rails to warm up that jamming bird's day a bit. Finally, the weather is closing in, so the strike may find itself blind bombing if the weather gets any worse.

KRL, jon H

 

[witchbottles]

We played one of the B52 scenarios many years ago, using the F111's to barrel at low level using their TFR under the NV radar to take out the NV airfields (this was so effective that we agreed to allow 1 airfield to remain unscathed for the sake of playability). Very counter heavy in terms of congestion. VASSAL would help. We also forgot that MiG 21's bug out when their missiles are depleted (cost me a B52....)

Playing the scenario is still a fond memory after all these years

VASSAL is a huge help, although the Cyberboard game box is also quite nice ( and a bit more faithful to the game graphics) - but Cyb lacks the "switchology" so useful in VASSAL modules, that is the ease of the selection markers that can be added as tags to just about every counter in a game within a VASSAL module, makes the game far easier to work with once the counter density jacks up, as it is now in our D1 game.

 

[Roy]

Our third playing of Dien Bien Phu: The Final Gamble by Legion Wargames is up on my blog. https://cardboardwarrior.blog/

Thanks for reading.

 

[62nd Army]

Gentlemen

Played Junta a few Saturdays ago, great fun. My loyal subjects deposed me, but I still managed to squirrel enough away in Switzerland to make it fun.
We played the 1985 West End version, again this is a fun game, if you ever get the chance play it!!

Next up some New World and probably Victory Games Pacific War or Siege of Jerusalem by AH??

Thanks
Joe

 

[Helmseye]

siege of jerusalem is a must if you can choose it

 

[stuh42asl]

Begining to play the first scenario for Deathride Kursk Grosdeutschland by Grognard Simultions. So far this is the ultimate game for the Kursk campaign. If you can give it a try.

 

[djohannsen]

Deathride Kursk Grosdeutschland by Grognard Simultions.

May need to look for this one... Thank you.

P.S. I found a copy of the 2010 version that didn't cost and arm and a leg, so I grabbed it. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[djohannsen]

Deathride Kursk Grosdeutschland by Grognard Simultions.

May I ask whether you're playing the 2010 or 2016 version? It's all a bit confusing to me, but it seems that the game was redesigned and original expansions to the GD base cannot be played with the new?

 

[GoM]

1914 TitE...
Solo learning if you can call it that...

 

[RobZagnut]

Gloomhaven. #1 game on the geek for good reason.

Or as I call it, Fantasy ASL with no dice. Highly tactical with 95 scenarios. The most brilliant system I've played since ASL. Lots of variety, the right amount of rules, the way and methods of gaining experience, the huge number of counters (18 huge counter sheets), six starting characters with 11 more to discover after they retire, the mapboards, the cool combat system, etc. Can be played solo with you taking 2-3 characters or with friends & family. I'm playing with two sons who are normally video game players, but love this game. My 22 year old bought his own copy, which is unbelievable, and started his own campaign with two friends.

Just a brilliant, tough and addicting game. I can't recommend this highly enough. We're on my 9th scenario and it gets better and better.