Board Games (Reviews, Rules, Regulations, Random)

[The Gnat]

I'm in the same boat with Pandemic, I think we're a little bit further along, but we are horrible about actually getting it done. And it's just two couples, so scheduling an evening shouldn't be too hard, but apparently it's impossible. They are busy and I'm busy, my wife is the on ly one who has a pretty free evening schedule.

 

I'd be curious as to what you are doing with HP Hogwarts Battle and expansion. My wife and I have played the base some, but I want to start playing it more often.

[fretgod99]

1 hour ago, The Gnat said:

I'd be curious as to what you are doing with HP Hogwarts Battle and expansion. My wife and I have played the base some, but I want to start playing it more often.

We’ve played through the base game 7 a billion and a half times. We’ve played every combination of characters and switched up proficiencies a bit, but our go-tos are me with Harry and Transfiguration and her with Hermione and History of Magic.

Game 7 isn’t tough once you figure it out. The expansions version of the Horcruxes can be situationally brutal because a lot of it entirely depends on card draws in the marketplace. We’ve beaten it but feels very random.

So we went back to just game 7. We put all the villains in the deck, draw three, then either shuffle in the game 5&6 Voldemorts or put them roughly at 1/3 and 2/3 into the deck. Originally, we treated them like any other villain (but with no reward). When we beat that consistently, we changed it to when Voldemort is drawn, you can’t attack any version of him until all the horcruxes are resolved. So it basically amounts to one (or two) extra dark arts cards every turn, which can get pretty brutal if you’re past the first location and/or have Bellatrix out. And Voldy5 makes an ugly pair with Crabbe and Goyle, who are normally super easy so you try to keep them around.

These latest we’ve played two characters each. Four characters is much harder than two because of the way the game works. We got crushed the first time we played. Couldn’t make it through the our decks to play our dice cards fast enough. The second time each character started with one four-cost card of our choosing in their discard pile. Lost with just 6 & 7 Voldy left (and 10/15 damage on 6). But it was still a huge struggle. Last time we played we had a 4-cost ally, 3-cost spell, and 2-cost item in our discards to start. We probably could have tweaked what 4-cost we started with and just done that again, but we wanted to win after fetting hammered a couple times. ? We won fairly handily.

Next time we play, we’re planning on the same setup, no start cards, each just playing one character, but randomly drawing characters and proficiencies (Transfiguration is stupid good. Defense against the Dark Arts with Ron is stupid good. Herbology is a complete no-brainer with Neville.). Random draw of proficiencies in particular could add an interesting twist since we’re so accustomed to our pairings at this point.

[Dome]

Played D&D for the first time last night and had a blast. Should be a semi-regular occurrence from here on out.

[bucsfan333]

Anybody play the "Curse of Strahd" story in d&d?

[MacReady]

I think Salem was a really fun logic type game.  Pretty simple, and I wish there was an element of deception to it, but I feel it was a pretty good game to start breaking away from the Monopoly/Risk/standard board games. 

[theJ]

On 6/21/2018 at 8:54 AM, fretgod99 said:

The expansion box is ridiculous (like borderline not-fun too hard),

I wondered if it was just us, but we thought it was too hard too.  We were only playing a two player game, so the game should have been easier since our decks should have been stronger.  But it was really hard to get rid of whatever those little cards were called (been a few weeks since we played it, and only played it once).  You have to have very specific hogwarts cards, which we didn't have.  Which meant that we were still trying to defeat those when Voldemort came up.  We were eventually killed off after about 2-3 hours of slowly bleeding to death.

 

On 6/21/2018 at 8:54 AM, fretgod99 said:

but we’ve made our own setup rules to make the base game a lot more challenging. Replay value is still fantastic. If anybody is interested, I can share how we do it.

I'm interested.  Base game is too easy for two players, and i don't like just starting the game with a few marks on the location.  Too simplistic, and often we're able to get rid of those pretty quickly thus kind of "resetting" the game.

EDIT: nvm, switched to the next page.

We'll have to try your suggestions.  I think i may take what you altered and do something similar for the Box of Monsters expansion.  Maybe start with a value 4 card in one or two players hands that can remove the situational randomness of those damn cards, but play with four players so we don't make it too easy.  Thanks for the suggestions!

[The Gnat]

23 hours ago, bucsfan333 said:

Anybody play the "Curse of Strahd" story in d&d?

I'm running it for a group right now. I like it as it's pretty open ended, but I feel like you need to rush them straight to level 5 because otherwise it's a lot of fighting a little bit, running away, fighting a little bit, running away, etc. until they get up there. It also works nicely to split up the group for the campaign which is always fun/dangerous.

[The Gnat]

Played two new games yesterday:

Century Road: Golem Edition
T.I.M.E. Stories: Asylum 

Century Road Golem Edition is a nice lighter weight game. You take one action per term so it goes quite quickly on each turn. The components are really nice for this game, and it seems like it should be a consistent game in the rotation of games that my wife will enjoy.

We also played the base story for T.I.M.E. stories, it took us three times to beat it. But it was a lot of fun and a challenging game. It reminds me of Unlock or Exit games where it's almost that escape room type feel, but much larger and a more in depth story. While we might not have been ready to sit down and play another module immediately, we did want to think about ordering one and play again soon. And how it's built to have a variety of stories, basically any type you want, that's pretty great. I hope sometime they maybe do a five story arc where the first four set-up the fifth one to some extent, but they are all stand alone stories, just with clues, or a villain that is encompassing in all of them.

[fretgod99]

I’m adapting the original Final Fantasy for NES to Pathfinder. Pretty excited about it. In the process of drawing up characters with the players using a Harrow Deck method (so there’s a good bit of randomness but can add some interesting backstory and flavor). Going to start out with some regional solo adventures which will lead into the larger global quest when the meet up. Kind of a big undertaking, but I’ve been mind-crafting it for a while. Could be an interesting ride!

[bucsfan333]

On 6/25/2018 at 9:55 AM, The Gnat said:

I'm running it for a group right now. I like it as it's pretty open ended, but I feel like you need to rush them straight to level 5 because otherwise it's a lot of fighting a little bit, running away, fighting a little bit, running away, etc. until they get up there. It also works nicely to split up the group for the campaign which is always fun/dangerous.

Are you leaving it open world? If so, do they have a map or are they just kinda freelancing with subtle nudges every once in a while?

[The Gnat]

4 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

Are you leaving it open world? If so, do they have a map or are they just kinda freelancing with subtle nudges every once in a while?

I'm leaving it pretty open world with nudges in interesting places to go to. I almost wish it was more focused, and I think you could do so with quest givers really focusing it down. But  some of it was that they kind of alienated themselves in a couple of places from the people who are already distrustful of them, so when the "good guys" don't like you, you aren't going to have many quests put in front of you.

[bucsfan333]

@The Gnat, did you do the Death House portion of Curse of Strahd?

[The Gnat]

On 6/30/2018 at 3:02 PM, bucsfan333 said:

@The Gnat, did you do the Death House portion of Curse of Strahd?

I did, that is very tough for players at the level they are at even. We had a very squishy wizard who had lots of troubles with the doors at the end of the thing for getting out of the house. It is good for setting a tone for the whole game, which my players didn't pick up on, but it was there. You could probably tweak it to make it shorter/easier and still have them get to level 3 when leaving the house, and push more into the gothic horror side of things versus the extremely deadly side of things.

[bucsfan333]

1 hour ago, The Gnat said:

I did, that is very tough for players at the level they are at even. We had a very squishy wizard who had lots of troubles with the doors at the end of the thing for getting out of the house. It is good for setting a tone for the whole game, which my players didn't pick up on, but it was there. You could probably tweak it to make it shorter/easier and still have them get to level 3 when leaving the house, and push more into the gothic horror side of things versus the extremely deadly side of things.

I've read quite a bit about others playing through it. Most either started everyone out a higher level or two or lessened the monsters. I was just curious how you did it.

I wanna hide some class-specific stuff throughout to introduce the idea of being thorough. Just simple low level stuff.

Based on your comment, they didn't sacrifice anyone. I wondered how you guys handled that.

[The Gnat]

7 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

I've read quite a bit about others playing through it. Most either started everyone out a higher level or two or lessened the monsters. I was just curious how you did it.

I wanna hide some class-specific stuff throughout to introduce the idea of being thorough. Just simple low level stuff.

Based on your comment, they didn't sacrifice anyone. I wondered how you guys handled that.

I started out at level 1. What I did was cut down on the number of doors that had blades on them and allowed them to cut through walls pretty easily making their way out. There were a couple of doors that were a challenge for them. I also let them rest, long rest, while they were in there. If they got to a place that made sense for them to be safe, I let them get in a rest, however, when they left the house, no time had passed, just to give an idea of the magical nature of this place. In fact, they burnt it down, but when they left town, I'm pretty sure I told them it was standing again. I'd lean towards lessening monsters personally if I were to do it again.

They did not sacrifice anyone, however, they did lay the kids to rest in their crypts. Two of them were possessed by the kids. I made it pretty obvious what they were supposed to do, but it was an interesting stretch for the players who I don't think were prepared to do that. Once the kids were laid to rest and the players had made the choice not to sacrifice someone, they are easily able to run away from the shambling mound (it shambles very slowly). 

If you don't want to change much about how things work, to show off the deadliness of the place, I'd probably do two things. The traps at the end, I'd cut the damage in half, and the monsters, I'd cut the HP in half. With half HP, they are still going to be able to take down a wizard pretty easily and even have a chance to take down some other PC's as well. However, keep it just enough to keep the players scared. You'll quickly find that the players start to become paranoid of everything in the Curse of Strahd game.