The Gaming thread - anything but video games

[lanky316]

If you've not killed your star player "going for it" and rolling 1, followed by a 1 and then a dead on the casualty table I don't believe you've ever played Blood Bowl.

[hallicks]

Been playing a shit ton of Dixit this Easter holiday. The kids love it, even if they don’t quite hit the level of nuance required to have a proper game. Having said that, we’ve played with grown ups who just don’t understand the concept at all. Good game though. 

[ReturnOfTheMack]

I LOVE Dixit, cracking fun game, and some gorgeous artwork.

[Thunderplex]

Finally got round to Star Wars Outer Rim and a many in love with it!  Drips theme, plays really well and straight forward once you get the rules sorted and is just a hell of a lot of fun.  Played Han Solo and nearly got the Millennium Falcon.  Next time …..

[Jazzy G]

Picked up Quoridor at Tabletop Dominion, the new gaming shop that's opened in n Accrington. We haven't had chance to play it yet, but it looks interesting. They have a barrel of loose dice and for a tenner they'll give you a paper coffee cup to scoop dice out of there. 

In D&D news I've picked up the essentials pack, and the starter pack to see whether Vicky wants to try. The essentials pack has a campaign that can be played with a single player, and the starter pack has some pre-created characters. I've also mentioned it to a few people in the pub, and we're contemplating trying to get a weekly session going here as well if we can find a time for it. 

Thursday campaign took a BIG change this past week as the guy who runs the session has stopped DMing it, but will still be about to help the players, so the guy who was learning to DM has taken over and has a whole different direction for it. We're all carrying on with our same characters, although I've renamed mine to Istvan Weerdal. I picked up one of those "rain drums" as well as my instrument of choice to just quietly play it in the background. Enhances my role playing a little. The already chilled sessions are a LOT more chilled and fun now as well. People have been feeling a lot more comfortable adding elements to their characters. 

[Onyx2]

10 hours ago, Jazzy G said:

Picked up Quoridor

About 15 years ago this was a lunchtime staple in the office. Excellent game, brilliantly simple. 

[Chest Rockwell]

Bit of a grey area when it comes to 'not video games' but does anyone have any experience of tabletop simulator or anything similar? 

Looking to get a virtual boardgame night going with a few of us who can't get together physically.

Edited April 24, 2025 by Chest Rockwell

[Jazzy G]

Did some combat this week at D&D. We were going exploring a monastery and got attacked by a mob of goblins. I used crown of madness on one of them who started attacking the rest of the party at my command. He actually managed to kill 2 of them, although one of them was because our Goliath barbarian threw him at the rest of them. I was all ready to kill him once the others were dealt with, but to differentiate him from the others we ended up calling him Boblin. 

Combat ended, at which point Boblin actually passed the wisdom check to break the spell on him. Rather than facing him down I made a persuasion roll to see whether he wanted to come with us since we spared him while fighting the others. I succeeded, so next week before the session I'm going to meet up with the DM and we're going to do a character sheet for him and see what happens from here. 

[JNLister]

11 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Bit of a grey area when it comes to 'not video games' but does anyone have any experience of tabletop simulator or anything similar? 

Looking to get a virtual boardgame night going with a few of us who can't get together physically.

Board Game Arena is the one we normally use. They are all licensed/legit versions of board games including a lot of big name ones. You can set it up to play in real time or do turn based (where you get an email when it's your turn and then have, for example, 24 hours to take your turn.) It's always free to play games, but a lot of the big names ones are premium which means the person who starts the game (and either invites players or sets it to let anyone join) need a paid account, which is a few quid a month.

[Thunderplex]

Tabletop simulator is good for what it is, but is simply a tabletop with bits on.  You all need to know the rules as the program does not moderate.

[JNLister]

Played Canopy Evergreen which is a lovely balance of simple actions/complex choices. The theme is building up a forest with cards of animals, plants, weather and bad shit like fires and disease. Other than optional spending food to get animals, all you do on your turn is look at piles of cards in turn and either take it and add them all to your forest, or move on to the next pile (if you turn down the third and final pile you have to take a card off the deck). The twist is each time you turn down a pile, you add another one (face down) to it from the draw deck. So everyone else knows that deck wasn't good enough for you to take, but it might be better now with the new card. But also what was bad for them might be good for you. But also, they know that, so they were bluffing. And also, even if it's a terrible pile, *somebody* is going to wind up having to take it at the end of the round.

Also the piles are arranged one between each pair of players and one in the middle. You also always choose starting with the one between you and the player to your left, then the one from the middle, then the one between you and the player to your right. So everyone is effectively choosing from a different set of options and a different order, which messes with your "what should I leave for somebody else to pick up" strategy.

The actual scoring is all familiar stuff -- points for sets; some stuff is bad on its own but great in pairs; a single wildfire can help you but two spells bad news -- but the draw mechanism makes it much more substantial than the gameplay suggests.

[Chest Rockwell]

Had our first game on Boardgame Arena this week so thanks guys! 

Played Wingspan. Have heard great things about it but this was my first time playing. Enjoyed it a lot. Love the theme, and the bird facts. The pace of the game pushes you along well but avoids being quite to the stress levels of 'I just need one more turn!' that some games can. Which I can also enjoy, but I enjoyed the gentle nature of this. Perhaps though it will become a bit more sweaty if we play more in future and understand the game better. But it felt like because not much changes between rounds and the round objective points aren't massive that it's pretty forgiving.

Best thing I've learned is the Latin name for the American Robin; turdus migratorius.

As for BGA, it makes things really easy! Barely any learning curve at all. Very intuitive. Did make me wish I had a second monitor though for the video chat so I can fit the game on fullscreen. But that's not their fault! Didn't try the in game chat function, we used discord. Maybe we'll give that a go another time. 

[Onyx2]

Huge fan of Wingspan and it's many expansions. Brilliant theme and lovely little machines you setup.

Hardcore board game nerds don't like it because you don't affect other players much and there is a simple game-breaking strategy. But I've racked up dozens of plays because it's just so pleasing.

[JNLister]

Played Grand Austria Hotel. Simple enough theme (you run a hotel where for some reason you put people in your cafe and don't give them a room until they've eaten a specific meal) with basic dice drafting/action selection but a nice twist. You roll a huge bunch of dice for the round and take it in turns to pick one and do the relevant action (eg 1 is to get a type of food, 3 is to hire staff, 4 is to get money). However, the more dice have that number, the more powerful the action (eg how much food you get, how cheap it is to hire staff). And of course every time someone takes a die, that action gets less powerful for future turns.

It was definitely a learning game and some of the icons are ludicrously unintuitive, but we pretty much figured it out and could see how it would be very enjoyable to play a second time.

[gaz2050]

Anybody off to the UKGE this year? If so, there's a game called ATW which is a wrestling themed card game (playable characters include Kurt Angle, Andre The Giant, Macho Man, RVD and Sabu along with many more) which is really fun and figured might be appropriate to mention on here.