So I do a weekly-ish game meeting with some friends. Depending on who shows, some nights end up being a more hangy-out with cards against humanity and ticket to ride to keep the casuals happy.

Other nights are when we test out new games/play the favorites. I've already written some about power grid and pandemic. We've more recently tried out Race for the Galaxy and Seven Wonders. 7 fucking wonders is goddamn amazing. It has entertained myself, all three of my brothers (13-24), my parents (50+), my girlfriend (not into games), and pretty much every person who has tried it. It's a great introductory boardgame but also great in general.

Race for the Galaxy isn't as easy for casuals, but it's a lot of fun and pretty deep as well. Really quick games as well so its something we can knock out while waiting for people to arrive or something. If anyone wants more info on either lemme know.

 

Ash have you gotten a chance to try the GoT Second Edition?

 

Yes, I own it. Fixes the myriad of problems in the 1st edition. Hate the pieces combined with the map though, I use the old wooden pieces, heh.

I HIGHLY recommend the Feast for Crows expansion for the 2nd edition. It adds objective cards, and House Arryn.

It turns a 6+ hour game into one that averages 2 and a half - 4 hours, which makes it much easier to play.

I created my own 4 player expansion because I love the objective cards, also. I added houses Martell and Tyrell, making it Martell/Tyrell/Lannister/Baratheon.

If anyone is interested, I can link you the cards and setup I made.

 

Oh God, Seven Wonders!

What a glorious game. I agree that it's very accessible to people who don't play so many board games and yet has enough depth for old hands to still be engaged. It's also quite fun to play on the back of a group that plays CivV with each other.

 

My platoon run a second edition game every Saturday/holiday. There are about 15 of us who play the game (just about everyone, including commanders) so every game is very different and exciting. So far it seems Stark is the strongest and Lannister the weakest, but it might be the way we play... Too bad there isn't an online version like diplomacy does, I have a ridiculous amount of time these days.

 

Well, you can use Vassal.

I've never used it myself, I play a lot IRL already, ~once a week.

Get the AFFC expansion, Grub. Or get your group to invest in the 9 player expansion....it is so glorious.

 

I tried vassal - didn't manage to find any active servers. It has been a long time ago though, so I'll give it another try next time I'm home. About AFFC; how is it so much shorter? That sounds amazing! Two and a half hours is pretty ideal for a boardgame. Definitely going to buy this. How is the game with less than 7 players?

Edit: Read about the expansion a bit, seems I got things mixed up. I was under the impression the expansion was a 7 player game when it is for 4. Seems pretty damn cool.

 

Yeah, it's shorter because of the 4 players, but mainly it is the addition of objective cards, and the change in scoring, that shortens it.

Planning on adding objective cards to the 6 player game and 9 player game, too.

 

So, I finally managed to play a game of Firefly (the board game). It was awesome.

I took Burgess as my leader, as just going with Mal and building the crew of the serenity seemed too obvious. Anyways, as it was my first game, I didn't really know what I was doing, but he had +1 to each skill which seemed fine, though he had no class bonus.

The first crew I hired was Jayne. He can carry 3 pieces of gear as opposed to +1, and if you stack him with all +fight gear, you won't need any other soldiers or mercs. That plan worked well. I acquired a generic pilot after than, followed by Simon Tam, who is a medic on steriods. Medics allow your crew to roll a 5 or 6 for a saving throw, and Simon adds +2 to that roll. I got Bree the mechanic after that, whose special skill of being able to sell parts to your contacts was pretty worthless, at least in this playthrough. I never had any extras laying around. I ended up getting Wash as my pilot, so I guess my plan of not assembling the crew wasn't going as planned, but they sort of just fell into my lap.

The game is fairly simple. You get 4 possible actions a turn, but can only do 2 of them. Work, Fly, Buy, and Deal. It takes fuel to fly around at any reasonable speed, or you can just mosey 1 space at a turn. Buy is getting gear, ship upgrades, and crew. Dealing is buy and selling to solid contacts, and getting jobs. You can have 3 active and 3 inactive jobs at a time, and completing them are fairly straightforward. Working is doing the job. Some of them need specialized gear, or enough skill points of a certain type (fight, tech, negotiate). Theres legal and illegal jobs. Legal wont get you in trouble with the law, is easier, and generally pays less. It can involve transporting passengers and cargo. Illegal jobs can involve transporting fugitives and contraband, but will pay more. You also have to do a special action called 'misbehaving' which I found to be lucrative in itself. You just draw a misbehaive card and do what it says, usually just rolling a dice for a check, and seeing the outcome. The outcomes ranges from merely proceding, to hauling a bunch of contraband, or getting your whole crew eaten by reavers if you don't have river tam. I found misbehaving to give the most overall, and quickly won by only accepting the jobs that told be to misbehave (and having a well geared crew. Burgess's bad ass flying hover jeep is awesome)

So yeah, that's about all I have to say. Awesome game, though I may be looking through rose tinted goggles.

 

Drome, Aek and I played this the other weekend. It was 'okay'. The quality of everything in the box is awesome and I enjoyed the fact that our single play through barely scratched the surface of what was on offer in terms of crew, upgrades, items, etc.

My biggest disappointment in hindsight was that although all the various cards, moneys, etc FELT authentic, there wasn't anything in the game mechanics that felt particularly like the show. All of those awesome moments that happened in the show are represented by 'Aim to Misbehave', a single dice roll.

Similarly, I felt like there were a lot of rules weren't entirely clear.

Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of fun and has a ton of replayability. But a classic, it ain't.

 

This thread hasn't been updated in a while, but I thought I'd see if anyone has been playing any cool new board games!

I haven't been playing many new games, just a bit of Ra, Sheriff of Nottingham, Eclipse, and Carcassonne on my phone with all of the expansions available.

 

I've been playing a ton of Kings of Tokyo and the expansion. It's a pretty fun, yet simple, game. I always pick the mecha dragon because Reasons. I think we're going to try and play Lords of Waterdeep next week, which should be fun. I've only seen it played on Tabletop, but it was enough to convince me to give it a try.

 

I've recently played Powergrid, the Battlestar Galactica game, and finally Lords of Waterdeep. Very slowly easing myself into nerdery.

 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10547/betrayal-house-hill

Played this last week, it's a two phase game. In the first you each send your character to explore a haunted house, laying down tiles to randomly generate the house as you discover each rooms. Events in each room give you items, or skills, or maim you, or whatever random shit. As the game progresses at some point the HAUNTING phase starts. In this phase there is a new objective, which is different each game. Often this is kill/escape the one player who is now a giant possessed snake monster, but in the one I played it was fight over the parachutes to get out of the house which is being carried away by a giant bird my dumbass jock character was perfect at beating up the old men and children that had been by erstwhile allies, and I happily jumped to safety.

Seemed like a great game, a nice balance between competitive and collaborative, and (although I only played it once) looked to have enough random variety for a lot of replay value.

 

Betrayal is a great game, I bought it a while ago, and when I went on holidays with my family I brought it with me because why the fuck not. And when it was raining and none of us felt like going outside, I ended up getting murdered by my little sisters in all 3 games ;-;

 

I second Betrayal's value! So much re-playability with all the different scenarios. The other games my play groups have been playing are the Cryptozoic Deck Building Games, 7 Wonders, Star Trek Catan, The Resistance/Avalon, and Coup. All of which I would highly recommend to everyone.

 

Don't know if they've been mentioned, but newer games I've been playing are

Viticulture and Dead of Winter. They are both amazingly fun and I'd highly recommend.

 

Palindrome, Irene and I played Gloom when we met up down in London and it was a ton of fun. There's something wonderfully fatalistic about trying to depress your characters to death while trying to make your opponents' characters happy.

 

Also while spinning epic tales about how their lives turned that unfortunate, and the weird comebacks that turn their lives around. It's pretty great, and the cards are pretty as hell. I was way too drunk while we played that game, though, oh boy.