The Gaming thread - anything but video games

[JNLister]

Not strictly a new game, but I played Viticulture with the Tuscany expansion for the first time. For those who know the game, it adds:

* You can take actions in all four seasons rather than Spring and Winter just being admin steps.
* There's no fixed order for deciding turn order/bonuses for the next year. Instead, whenever you pass in Winter you get to choose your slot for next year. Also, the only way to get the guaranteed first place slot is to have picked the guaranteed last place slot the year before.
* There's a new type of card which is additional structures, each which give you a particular bonus. As normal, you need to pay to build them and building them is an action.
* There's a mini-game where, as an action, you can place a star in a region of a map. When you place in a region you get a specific bonus (you can also move an already placed star between regions but don't get a bonus). If you have the most stars in a region at the end of the game, you get points.

It's definitely a good expansion if everyone has played the base game a lot as it makes it a bit more strategic and gives you more options. It does take you a bit further towards the "you can win the game without spending much time actually making and selling wine" route, which is OK if you are into wider gameplay but is less thematic. It's definitely not for first time players as it would just be too many options and takes away the normal helpful advice that if you are uncertain what to do, it's a decent starting strategy to just follow through the winemaking process logically (get vines and orders, plant vines, harvest grapes, make wine, age wine, fulfill order).

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Last weekend I played the Discworld RPG. Very simple and lots of fun, I highly recommend it.

[JNLister]

Played Hit Z Road. It's basically a combination of Zombie Dice and a bidding game. The theme is driving across the US during a zombie apocalypse trying to get to LA. As well as the basic "roll dice to fight zombies" mechanic, you have limited resources of bullets (give you a chance to take out zombies before having to fight them), fuel (you can escape some zombie fights by speeding away) and adrenaline (basically a second chance that either undoes a zombie bite or kills an extra zombie when you attack). The catch is that each round you lay out cards (which have various combos of resources to scavenge, events, and zombies to fight) in sets representing different roads, and you have to bid with resources to decide what order people choose which of the roads they'll go along. 

In theory the winner is the one with the most points (some zombie cards have points if you stay, fight and win, plus variable end game bonuses for most of a resource, most surviving groups members, etc), though that only matters if more than one person makes it to the end. As the cards get increasingly nastier along the way, that is definitely not guaranteed. A lot of fun, though a bit longer than you'd expect, quick to learn, and a nice balance of luck and strategy.

(I also played Tunnel Rumble, which was a playtest of a game designed by one of our group, so I'm just noting it here for my own records.)

[JNLister]

Played Herd Mentality (at a non-gamer gathering). Extremely simple: you get a category/question ("what's the best dinosaur that isn't a t-rex", "what's the biggest fruit you can fit in your mouth", "would you rather be too hot or too cold"), everyone writes down an answer, and you get a point if you gave the most common answer. (*) First to 8 wins, with the catch that if you are ever the only person to give an answer that nobody else gave, you get a plastic cow in front of you and cannot win until somebody else has taken it off you. Fun little game that doesn't outstay its welcome and would probably work best with a group who knew each other well so you can get into the whole "I know what everyone would put if they answered for real, but what would they guess everyone else would put, and then what if they thought everybody else was approaching it in the same way" cycle.

(* - There's a major flaw in the rules as it says "When all the answers have been revealed, count them up to find out which was the most common. If your answer was part of the majority, collect one cow as a reward", which a pedant would point out is mixing up plurality and majority.)

[Jazzy G]

It is a fun game. 

I'm at my first Magic The Gathering Prerelease in almost twenty years on Sunday with some friends who are also Magic/Star Trek fans. I'm usually dreadful at them, although during the first Mirrodin block there were some card mechanics and deck designs so simple I managed to win prizes back with them, but had no such luck during the following block: Time Spiral. I'm hoping against hope I manage to end up with the cards to assemble something resembling a Borg deck, as that feels like it could be useful. It's a question of seeing what multicoloured cards I get and hopefully being able to build something around them. Also I'd love if I got the Chief O'Brien card, even though I think I'd have to go white/blue if I was to do something with him outside of the prerelease. We'll see what happens. I'm sure it'll be fun regardless. 

[ReturnOfTheMack]

1 hour ago, JNLister said:

Played Herd Mentality (at a non-gamer gathering). Extremely simple: you get a category/question ("what's the best dinosaur that isn't a t-rex", "what's the biggest fruit you can fit in your mouth", "would you rather be too hot or too cold"), everyone writes down an answer, and you get a point if you gave the most common answer. (*) First to 8 wins, with the catch that if you are ever the only person to give an answer that nobody else gave, you get a plastic cow in front of you and cannot win until somebody else has taken it off you. Fun little game that doesn't outstay its welcome and would probably work best with a group who knew each other well so you can get into the whole "I know what everyone would put if they answered for real, but what would they guess everyone else would put, and then what if they thought everybody else was approaching it in the same way" cycle.

(* - There's a major flaw in the rules as it says "When all the answers have been revealed, count them up to find out which was the most common. If your answer was part of the majority, collect one cow as a reward", which a pedant would point out is mixing up plurality and majority.)

Oh this led to a surprisingly heated argument one Christmas at my in laws.

We were playing it and the question was about whats the most popular pizza topping. I, and the small majority, said cheese. Turned into a near half hour argument as to if cheese counts as a topping.

[Jazzy G]

However else would you have a quattro formaggio?