Long time lurker in this thread, and I gotta say this, you guys are bad for my wallet.
Took a long weekend to drive up to Dallas for board games with friends and managed to play a lot of new games.
The Resistance: Bought this back in November and I finally got to put this on the table for a second play. I think it's a great alternative to the other social deductive games I know. I like Mafia/Bang except for the fact there is early player elimination, and I love BSG but we play with AP players (the guy who owns the game is the most AP of us all) so every sessions is 2-3+ hours.
Liar's Dice: Everybody just loves this game. I even bought a second set for my gf so that when the group is big enough we can play with more than 6. Came in handy and we had 7 people rolling die, and almost got to a bid of 20 6s.
Lost Cities Card Game: New game for me. I love how simple it is to pick up and play, but I hate that luck plays enough of a factor that I can't stop someone from playing 2-3 handshakes and 4,5,6,7,8,9 of a color.
Flash Point: Fire Rescue: This game just looks well made. It was our group's first time playing and I did the rules reading. We played 3 games, 2 family and 1 experienced on Novice. As a pandemic vet, I made the mistake of chaining explosions like pandemic in the first game. Whoops. Suffice to say we lost due to structural damage very fast. Games 2 and 3 however went a lot faster and I immediately added this to my CSI cart the next day. One thing I noted and I'm not sure what to do, but when using the fire truck to hose down a quadrant, our D8 had a 1 & 2 on opposite sides of the die, so when we were trying to extinguish fire in a quadrant with 5+ on the D8 roll, we were stuck on determining which way to convert the roll. (basically a 1 was rolled but when we flipped the die to the side facing the table, it revealed a 2) I ended up just using the opposite face of the pyramid the 1 is on, but it begs the question of "Did the game come with the wrong die? or am I misunderstanding what it means to flip the D8 over to the opposite facing?"
7 Wonders w/Leaders Expansion: My first time with the expansion. Leaders is nice, I like it. Just don't think it adds enough for $20. Perhaps I just need more plays in the original so I get bored of it first. The added overall goals were cool, but it also felt like some of the leaders were just unbalanced.
Kingdom Builder: Played this for a third or 4th time. House ruled an opening hand of 2 cards to try and mitigate getting stuck with 1 land type the entire game. Friend of mine still ended up with 5-6 canyons in a row, so maybe we'll try 3 card hands next time... Or maybe allow them to shuffle their existing hand back in the deck and draw 1 less for the rest of the game if they have all of the same type.
Blood Bowl: Team Manager: Finally got to play this with non-casuals. Fun game. Tackle rolls are intense and so is revealing cheat tokens for ejections. The deckbuilding aspect is cool but the game doesn't last long enough to really take advantage of seeding your deck. Especially if you have a few guys that sprint. I like it more because of the interaction in playing each card, you feel like you're actually doing something instead of Dominion where it's who has the best solitaire strat. My favorite play was when I played a star that had a downed 4 star power and a standing 1 star power and then he got tackled. Also realized I had been playing this game wrong in regards to revealing improvements. Oh well. Mistakes to be learned for next time.
Ricochet Robots: This game is the best. Holding onto a 5 move solution to sneak it in at the end of the timer is a great feeling, of which I'm sure a greater one would be calling out a 4 move solution right after that, but I haven't had that happen. Yet. The best part of this is the tiebreaker rule or handicap which makes the game always feel close and doesn't allow for runaway leaders unless the skill levels are way on the opposite ends of the spectrum.
Castles of Burgundy: I'm not sure what to think here. I like the game, but it drags a little long (maybe because it was a learning game). The resource gathering portion reminds me of Agricola, as well as the limited turns (because ogod I need to do EVERYTHING and don't have the time to do so) I made a mistake of not rolling and grabbing mines early in the game so I didn't have the silverlite production I wanted, and fell way behind in VP gained from selling goods. Oh well. New strategy next time, but I don't think this will be on my mind when it comes to choosing a game to play.
Blokus 3D: This is way different from regular Blokus. Played 2 games. 3 way tie for first the 1st game, and second game was something like 13, 8, 6, 5 for scores with me in 3rd because 1st place ate all the good plays leaving me with spaces that set up the next person for points. Also found out we were playing this wrong so I'll have to give it another go with the proper rules.
Pack and Stacks: Light game but too random for me. Ideally you want to search for the card that gives you the closest to finish with the roll you have, but there's not enough time to assess that and it seems best to just grab the nearest 4 level truck you can get no matter your roll to make sure you can fit as many pieces in as you can. Also, since the cards don't always match up to everybody's rolls, you can get screwed if there just plain isn't a truck big enough to hold your stuff.
I think that covers the highlights. Aside from Liar's Dice and Ricochet Robots, all the games are still new/relatively new to me. The next day I put in an order in CSI for Takenoko, Flash Point, TtR: Asia, Ricochet Robots, and some FFG Sleeves to put me over $100 for free shipping. Should all get in tomorrow and I'm pretty excited.
I had a chance to play A Few Acres of Snow but that got pushed aside for a game we knew the rules to in the interests of time.