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Board Games (Reviews, Rules, Regulations, Random)


The Gnat

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Played my copy of Star Wars: Imperial Assault last Friday. I hadn't gotten it to the game before because it needed an  overlord running the empire. However, Fantasy Flight put out an app now. Overall, I think it is nice for the game, though I can see, especially with more than two people, that having someone run the overlord would be fun. The app works out well, though, I don't think it's great on a phone. App probably would be better on a tablet and would solve some of the layering issues. I can see Assault as one that I'm going to put a fair amount of money into for their campaigns, and the minis are really nice.

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Christmas this year was the year of the board game for me:
Betrayal at Baldur's Gate
Machi Koro: Bright Lights, Big City
Shakespeare
Titans Race
and
Photosynthesis

Played Machi Koro thus far, but I'm hoping in the next day or so to get Titans Race to the table. Small fun, fast looking game.

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Got my wife Hogwarts Battle for Christmas. She played games 1 and 2 (combined them) with her mom, brother and sister. I was the "Rum Filled Rules Expert" so they probably cheated/got cheated once or twice. We plan on playing games 1-3 tonight. 

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27 minutes ago, domepatrol91 said:

Got my wife Hogwarts Battle for Christmas. She played games 1 and 2 (combined them) with her mom, brother and sister. I was the "Rum Filled Rules Expert" so they probably cheated/got cheated once or twice. We plan on playing games 1-3 tonight. 

I think I’ve mentioned in thread, but if not, the game is easier with 2 than 3 than 4. It’s odd like that. But hopefully just playing the first books it shouldn’t be noticed so you can all get the rules figured out. You can mitigate some of the difficulty by being better at the game and more familiar with the rules. Plus, later adding some houserules can help as well.

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19 hours ago, The Gnat said:

One Deck Dungeon looks interesting.

I've heard about it, but don't know much about it and how it works.

Roll dice, overcome obstacles. By and large the rules for encounters are Do What It Says On The Tin. Overcoming encounters gives you added abilities, more dice to roll, etc. But mostly, it’s rolling dice of different colors and trying to cover up boxes. So to beat monster X, you roll all the dice available and you have to get 4 on an yellow die and a 5 on a red die, etc. Different characters get to roll different numbers of the differently colored dice. You might have abilities that let you swap out dice for other colors or numbers. Relatively straight forward once you’ve played it, but still fun.

You can play easily one-player (which I’ve done). Two player is also easy, you just flip everything over to the 2-player side. You can also play 4-player with another crew of 2 by combining decks and doubling everything up.

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Time to learn how to play Near and Far. Going to bust it out on Monday with some friends as we roll up D&D characters as well for the next installment of the game/podcast that I'm running. We're jumping further forward into the future of the world of Dungeons and Flagons, so it'll be interesting to see what they roll up, plus I need to improve technology, though technology will move ahead slowly because magic is pretty common.

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8 hours ago, The Gnat said:

Time to learn how to play Near and Far. Going to bust it out on Monday with some friends as we roll up D&D characters as well for the next installment of the game/podcast that I'm running. We're jumping further forward into the future of the world of Dungeons and Flagons, so it'll be interesting to see what they roll up, plus I need to improve technology, though technology will move ahead slowly because magic is pretty common.

Home brew?

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On 8/23/2017 at 3:27 PM, fretgod99 said:

It's a fantastic two player game. My wife and I love it. As Gnat noted, the first game is basically a walk-through. And honestly, the first ~3 books are pretty much on tutorial mode. It picks up after that, especially getting into 6 & 7. 7 is where the real replay value is. My wife and I have started playing around with different ways to make the game a little more difficult because once you start to figure out a few combinations it streamlines the game. Still fun though. It has a bit of a reputation of being extreme one way or another; either you pretty decently handle everything it throws at you, or the combinations of enemies/cards available turns into the game crushing you. But some of the most exciting games are the ones that, for the first 20-30 minutes, look like you're going to get curb-stomped but you find a way to power through.

Got it for my wife for christmas.  Good recommendation.  We already played through games 1-7.  Now on to the expansion!

On 12/26/2017 at 5:48 PM, fretgod99 said:

I think I’ve mentioned in thread, but if not, the game is easier with 2 than 3 than 4. It’s odd like that. But hopefully just playing the first books it shouldn’t be noticed so you can all get the rules figured out. You can mitigate some of the difficulty by being better at the game and more familiar with the rules. Plus, later adding some houserules can help as well.

We noticed that too.  By the skin of our teeth we beat game 2 with four players (by skin of the teeth, i mean a dark arts card added the final dark mark to a location on the same turn that we hit the final baddie with the final bolt, which removed one dark mark).  With two players, we played games 3-7 and only lost a location once.

It's because with two you run through your starter deck in four turns and start hitting baddies with better cards in round 3.  With four players, it takes 8 turns to cycle through everyone's starter cards.  By any given round you've cycled through your deck twice as much as you would have with four players.

But, my wife prefers a nice relaxing game as opposed to every being...well...opposed.  So whatever.  It's all for fun anyway.

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Also for christmas, we got Suburbia.  Very fun game, if you can concentrate enough to read the rules and understand them.  I had a few beers on christmas night and tried to read the rules.  Let's just say we played an easier that night.

The game is a tile laying game, where your goal is to build the city with the largest population.  To build a nice population, you need money.  The higher your population gets, the harder it is to make money and get more population.  As the game progresses, new tiles are introduced to the game with different effects.  The tiles can impact your adjacent tiles, non-adjacent tiles, and other players tiles. There are some end of game bonus goals (both private and public) that makes the winner hard to predict.

It's a nicely balanced game that even has a one player variant (i haven't played it yet).

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On 12/29/2017 at 7:27 PM, fretgod99 said:

Home brew?

Yeah, I home brew everything.

Played Near and Far yesterday with 4 people. I think, because we were learning it 4 people was too many, and I think probably generally too many people for the game. It just isn't short enough with that number of players and you run out of meaningful things to do.

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With rolling up new characters for Dungeons and Flagons yesterday, we have a party that are:
Mountain Dwarf Champion Fighter
Half-Elf Thief Rogue
High Elf Divination Wizard

And this time it's going to be a city adventure (or more city focused) as compared to a more epic traveling Lord of the Rings style adventure.

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