The Gaming thread - anything but video games

[Nexus]

My girlfriend really hates the PACG. I want to like it, but I'm yet to sit down and properly get to grips with it.

 

I played Dixit yesterday for the first time - a bit like Balderdash but with abstract pictures - a lot of fun but I can see it getting boring quickly.

 

Also played BSG with most of the expansions - I was a Cylon Leader, and it was pretty tough going when the loyalty cards only dealt one Cylon in the 7 players, and not until Sleeper. Meant that even if I wanted to win with the Humans, the win conditions I needed were too difficult as the Humans hadn't lost anything majorly important.

 

Marvel Legendary was played this morning, and it wasn't too bad - first time piss poor shuffling meant we lost within about five minutes, but second time round it was better.

 

Finally, I purchased Friday as a solo-game last week. It's based off Robinson Crusoe and you have to try and survive the island - BGG says that it's about a 33% win rate. I've played 8 games and I won for the first time today! Definitely some replayability in it.

[Onyx2]

I'm currently addicted to Zombicide. Such a simple game and writes great narratives by itself. Highly recommended.

[Thunderplex]

Nexus, the rules for PACG are not the best, but it's all clear after you watch a couple of how to play vids on YouTube.

 

I've got Zombiecide cued up on Camel Camel Camel for £40, so here's hoping!

[Thunderplex]

Thought I'd drag this up being close to Christmas which is normally quite a gamey time for people.

 

Mostly playing solo due to lack of time these days. Loving Legendary and Friday for this. About to order Arkham Horror.

 

Have got pandemic legacy, but my gaming group have been a bit fragmented recently, but hopefully will be good in the new year. Tempted to open the envelopes, but have resisted up to now.

[Onyx2]

We're 6 months into Pandemic Legacy. Very enjoyable. Starts easy, but...

[Chest Rockwell]

Been a good year for gaming for me. Got a reasonably reliable semi regular group of mates together. My favourite game of the year has been game of thrones. It's an all day affair when you play it but well worth it. Kinda like Risk, but the game mechanics are well-designed to force you to make alliances and then eventually fuck each other over.

 

Also been playing the walking dead game a fair bit (the good one based on the comic that's published by z-man, not the crap one based on the tv show). It's a really fun game, but the prison expansion is a bit ill-conceived and disappointing. It kinda renders the whole first half of the game meaningless. Better off without.

 

Also had some pretty epic games of Carcassonne.

[PunkStep]

Also had some pretty epic games of Carcassonne.

 

I bloody love Carcassonne, my friend ('Mr AWOL' himself, Burchills Buddy) got it a couple of years ago and we've had some cracking games. I downloaded it on my tablet as well, but obviously it isn't the same. Catan is the next one we need to try because that looks decent.

 

Forbidden Desert is really good too- unlike Carcassonne etc you all have to work together to win the game as a group, which makes it really interesting. Completely different dynamic to our normal cut-throat playing stances. I got another friend Forbidden Island for Christmas, which looks quite similar.

 

But the games of Risk we've had this year have been pretty epic, you can't beat a bit of Risk. We had a 6-hour game earlier this year which we never ended and called it a day at 2am (I was fucking winning as well!).

[Nexus]

I *had* a semi-regular group until July, when I moved to Banbury. I then joined a d&d group but a combination of factors broke that up too.

 

Now I haven't been able to play much at all, which is a shame. Over the Summer I tried and enjoyed Mysterium and Lords of Waterdeep - particularly the latter. I would buy it, but my partner (who i mainly game with) is Visually Impaired, and can't discern the colours - I tried to see if I could source some more obviously separately-coloured meeples, or some shaped ones that made sense, but they were either ridiculously expensive or non-existent.

[mim731]

Played a cracking round of Takenoko yesterday (bit like Settlers of Catan but concerned with growing a garden and stopping a panda from eating all your bamboo). Would reccommend. 

[Astro Hollywood]

I've done a massive amount of gaming this year, so I'll have to go back and check on all the new stuff I've tried out and report back later. But in more mass-appeal talk, 2016 was the year I finally beat my cousin at Scrabble, after 2+ decades of trying. We've been having weekly Scrabble sessions this year, and he's the type of player who regularly uses up all his tiles for that 50 point bonus more than once in a game (and mostly on the triple word tile). It's interesting, to me at least, how differently you approach it at a certain point. When you're a kid, you're just looking to make a word out of your tiles and find somewhere to put it, and getting a Z or a Q is a bad thing. Now, you're begging for those tricky letters, and looking for doubles or triples you can get both ways for the 40/50/60 pointers.

 

We've become such high-level, Olympic standard players now, I dread to think what it's going to do to the rest of the family on Christmas day, trailing us by hundreds of points.

Edited December 20, 2016 by Astro Hollywood

[Chest Rockwell]

Would be interested on a rundown of the good and the bad of what you've tried Astro, particularly if there's any two player games in there.

 

My mate managed to find his old Hero Quest set for me and it's complete. I'm going to need to get a group together to run through a campaign of that.. I'm really exited to play it again.

[Astro Hollywood]

Had a look at my earlier post in this thread from a couple of years ago, and have changed my opinions somewhat. Having played Pandemic again, I'd gladly not return to it. I'm not a big fan of co-op in general, just doesn't get the adrenaline flowing like competition. Ditto the Thunderbirds kickstarter game, which is lovingly put together, but not very exciting. Maybe with co-op, those 'first plays' where you're learning tend to be on the simpler setting, so suck out the challenge/fun when it comes to considering playing again.

 

I've played way, way more Settlers this year. Probably a good 20 games over the year, including expansion packs Seafarers, Cities and Knights, Frenemies, and a Christmas expansion someone had last week, where you can give Santa wool for his jacket and he lets you move the robber. I'd recommend them all, as Settlers is great, and even minor tweaks change the game so much if you're familiar with it. It's become the game for me, simple to play, but with so many possibilities, out of a large group of experienced regular players, it can still be anybodies at any given week.

 

Other stuff I've played for the first time this year --

 

Codenames is billed as a party game, but it's incredibly cerebral and I felt like I burned up many braincells trying to lead my team to victory when I was the spymaster.

 

Splendor is probably my favourite new game this year. It's a really simple deck building game, where you're buying gems with coins, but your buying strategies will often be usurped by those taking their turn before you, so you're constantly trapped between shifting strategies and hoping to catch up, or sticking to your guns and gutting it out.

 

Traverse is like weird, future chess, although I was playing on a beautifully hand-crafted set that looked like something you'd see them using in the Ten Forward lounge on the Enterprise.

 

Sushi Go! is a fun card game, and works well (in fact, completely differently) with two players, and is a nice opener if you're waiting for people to arrive before cracking on with the 'proper' game of the evening, or as a closer if you're finished early. Love Letter is similarly quick, although harder for non-initiated to jump right into, whereas Sushi Go! can be explained and understood by all in about a minute.

 

Cornish Smuggler is alright, but I wouldn't play it twice. Shame, because the design is exceptional, with dozens and dozens of beautifully etched, completely grotesque characters.

 

Between Two Cities has a super dull design, but the gameplay is moderately more interesting. I've played it a few times, but I don't know I'd want to return to it again.

 

Sheriff of Nottingham is based around trying to get contraband past the Sheriff, so the gameplay comes out of bribery, and whether or not you believe the players are telling you the truth, which is basically the ingredients for Gaming Group Bants. Fun.

 

Bladder was picked up in a charity shop, and is one of those chess variant games, and quite old, based around olden days football where it literally was a pig's bladder and it was half-rugby. Like Traverse, it's that thing I love in a game where it looks really simple -- like a child's game -- but each time you play, you become aware of another aspect you have to keep in mind, rendering your previous strategy void, and is much more complex than it seems. Also the ball is brown and looks like a poo.

 

One of my favourites this year is Formula D, which is a racing game. As you'd expect, the board is a big track, and your pieces are cars, but unlike every other game where you're trying to roll high, depending on what gear you're in, you need to roll low numbers (on various-sided dice) when you're cornering, or your car sustains damage. With 12 players, it's an absolute blast, because you're often trading off the risk of getting in front with the damage you sustain careening round corners, with each car only having a certain number of damage points before it explodes. The winner of the last game I played trundled over the line with 1 damage point left, which was the equivalent of rolling past on one flaming tire. With a lot of players, it's genuinely a real adrenaline rush, and there are a lot of other tracks, like a night-time city one, where there are snipers and cops, to freshen things up.

 

Oh, had a crack at Time Stories: Asylum, too. It's one of those 'play once, throw away' games (at least the Asylum part; you can buy other decks for it). It's the closest thing to videogame mechanics I've ever played, where you're time travellers who run through a scenario until you fail, then get to go back again, but this time having learned from your mistakes. It's halfway between a boardgame and an RPG, with a lot of reading off of cards and putting on voices, which is always fun. Our last run was ruined by us spending ages trying to (remember how) to get a specific object, then discovering it was a red herring anyway. And the character designs and special abilities are tremendous.

Edited December 20, 2016 by Astro Hollywood

[Chest Rockwell]

Cheers for that. A fun read! Mr wife got that codename game in her secret Santa at work, so looking forward to giving it a go.

 

I can't believe you socialised with eleven other people at once!

[Mr.E]

I recently played the Batman Love Letter game, which is very quick and easy to pick up/play. I'll be honest as say I have very little patience for games, (anything that takes longer that 10 minutes to explain just pisses me right off) but Love Letter is great. I haven't played as many games as I'd have liked to this year, but highlights have been: Boss Monster, Battlestar Galactica, Love Letter and Pandemic as well.

 

A bunch of my friends play D&D as well, although I've never ventured into that world of gaming yet. Is it any good?

[mim731]

Just to add to the love for it, Codenames is excellent. Really enjoyable game that can be as cerebral as you want. Have played it with family where it was less so, and friends who are big into their board games who made it way more tricky. Good game!