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[Flynn]

Sob story:

Our gaming group met (we have a semi public Yahoo/BGG group for the area I live) and one of our flakier attendees (we have a few) showed up.

Because we had six we had to split up. One group played Ad Astra while me and a friend taught the guy Founding Fathers.

We were barely into the first round of the game when he said, "I'm really tired. Can I take a nap." He'd been kinda nodding off during the game so we let him sleep on the couch.

So me and my friend, put the game away and decided to play a learning game of In The Shadow of the Emperor. We set up and read through the rules and as soon as we were ready to start playing the guy shuffled over.

We weren't going to try to teach Mr. Groggy the game (because he never seems to have the attention span for anything beyond a light card game) so we put THAT away and played his copy of The Stars Are Right, which I guess is better than playing Munchkin.

The other iffy guy in our group always brings the same four Ameritrash games and tries to get us to play them. He's not great at taking a hint.

Sorry, I had to vent. I like playing with a couple of the guys out here, but man, do I miss my group in Minnesota.

 

[Neverfade]

There's always one.

We have a 'that guy' at our BG group. Hogs the hosts' snacks/soda, a rules nazi (being mostly incorrect or taking a filler/fun game WAY too serious), gloating, and he's one of those "Uh, actually..!" nerds that feels to throw out a correction in casual conversation.

If the hosts weren't such awesome people, I'd have strangled him and made a boardgame out of his organs by now.

 

[SapientWolf]

There's always one.

We have a 'that guy' at our BG group. Hogs the hosts' snacks/soda, a rules nazi (being mostly incorrect or taking a filler/fun game WAY too serious), gloating, and he's one of those "Uh, actually..!" nerds that feels to throw out a correction in casual conversation.

If the hosts weren't such awesome people, I'd have strangled him and made a boardgame out of his organs by now.

He's a geek. Nerds know their shit.

I actually wouldn't mind if someone else could be the human rule book because the burden usually falls on me when I play board games with the fam. Such is life.

 

[Neverfade]

I actually wouldn't mind if someone else could be the human rule book

A different guy usually takes that role, and he's much better at it.

 

[Flynn]

A different guy usually takes that role, and he's much better at it.

Yeah, I love people who can be reliably depended upon to make a ruling. Not so fond of the rules lawyers.

 

[StoOgE]

That sucks.

My biggest problem is I have a few friends that like board games in that they like moving little chits around and "doing stuff" but they have no appreciation for strategy at all. Most of the time they get bored halfway through rules explanation and tell me to just start the game. How they are going to try and win before I explain the winning conditions? who knows.

 

[AstroLad]

That sucks.

My biggest problem is I have a few friends that like board games in that they like moving little chits around and "doing stuff" but they have no appreciation for strategy at all. Most of the time they get bored halfway through rules explanation and tell me to just start the game. How they are going to try and win before I explain the winning conditions? who knows.

The last dice tower is actually all about the best teach-as-you-go games.

 

[ultron87]

Yeah, I love people who can be reliably depended upon to make a ruling. Not so fond of the rules lawyers.

That usually ends up being me with our group. Most often it is for DnD rulings since I was the one who taught everyone the game and was our first DM (though I haven't done that in more than a year now :lol), but it comes up for other board games as well.

Played Small World for the first time over the weekend. It is fun and silly and light. Nice and short too. Second time we played it ended up really close as well with less than 10 points separating all the players.

 

[BattleMonkey]

For any mini gamers that might be in here, Spartan just announced a very cool looking steampunk game called Dystopian Wars. Giant steam airships, landships, naval craft with victorian stylings - http://spartangames.co.uk/dystopian_wars.html

That usually ends up being me with our group. Most often it is for DnD rulings since I was the one who taught everyone the game and was our first DM (though I haven't done

Worst rule trolls always seem to come whenever I've jumped into random D&D games at game stores. Usually try to just stick to people I know because I also often want to yell at random game store losers about there lack of social skills.... or bad smells.

 

[Xater]

So I tried out Race for the Galaxy on the computer. I don't think this game is for me. There is so much stuff to keep track off.

 

[Neverfade]

So I tried out Race for the Galaxy on the computer. I don't think this game is for me. There is so much stuff to keep track off.

Everyones first go blows their brain, kinda like The Matrix! Stay strong!

 

[AstroLad]

Yeah, it's weird. I imagine it might be tough to learn on the computer. But most people have to play about 5-10 games and then honestly it becomes just as easy as San Juan. Make sure you aren't playing with any expansions either.

 

[ultron87]

Worst rule trolls always seem to come whenever I've jumped into random D&D games at game stores. Usually try to just stick to people I know because I also often want to yell at random game store losers about there lack of social skills.... or bad smells.

That stuff is way less necessary in DnD anyways. Since it isn't a competition and the difficulty is controlled by the DM it doesn't really matter that you follow the letter of the rules as long as you keep the PCs balanced with each other and provide everyone a good fun challenge.

With board games you can kind of totally ruin the game if you interpret some rule the wrong way (like when we were playing Game of Thrones: Storm of Swords last week and didn't realize you couldn't support across movement arrows allowing the Baratheon to player to absolutely ream the Lannister player).

 

[StoOgE]

Everyones first go blows their brain, kinda like The Matrix! Stay strong!

yeah, the game is insane the first few times you play it.

Eventually you get to the point where all those symbols actually mean something. Which is scary in and of itself.

 

[AstroLad]

RFTG is our favorite filler game now. Just checked on BGG and it looks like we've played almost 20 games in the past month alone. It's honestly like Dominion except even less stressful to me.

 

[StoOgE]

Stopped by the Savers near work at lunch.

Beyond Balderdash and 10 days in America for 6 dollars total.

Both are opened, but once I lifted the lid off (I just pull the tape off to see how it looks inside) the innards had not been opened in either game.

Beyond Balderdash is one of the top party games on BGG, so I'll keep it for parties and whatnot. Seems like a fun bluffing game not completely unlike Wits and Wagers meets Apples to Apples with a mechanic to keep people from just acting stupid on purpose.

10 days in America (or through America, or something) is an Alan Moon (Ticket to Ride) designed game that seems to be a deck building game of sorts.. looks pretty similar to TTR except you lay cards instead of tracks. I think it is going right in the BGG-Con math trade.

I also decided to sell the Star Wars game I picked up. It's a fun game, and there is something nifty about being able to have Luke battle Vader.. and something cool about owning such a rare game. That said, if I can sell this sucker for 80-120 dollars I could buy 3-4 much better games with that money and I just can't justify holding onto a light 2 player game when I already own several, much better light 2 player games.

 

[StoOgE]

RFTG is our favorite filler game now. Just checked on BGG and it looks like we've played almost 20 games in the past month alone. It's honestly like Dominion except even less stressful to me.

RFTG is elegantly streamlined where Dominion is pretty clunky.

Dominion also has the issue of there being a single strategy that will net you a win 99% of the time (i.e. buy money). RFTG requires you to think on your feet and sometimes switch tactics in the mid to late game if you can tell you are getting hustled by your buddy.

I enjoy Dominion, but I've really started to sour on it a bit compared to when I first got it and thought it was the pinnacle of awesome.

That, and I don't want to have to schlep 8 boxes around when I go somewhere.

 

[AstroLad]

Yeah I have a problem in Dominion where I'll see the obvious strategy pretty quickly and then just try to out-clever it, often to my detriment. I'm just really stubborn about it. We played Prosperity for the first time yesterday but it's hard to judge as it was with the "Beginner" set (I like to go through all the recommended sets first with each expansion), which had some insanely overpowered combos to the point where we were getting 20+ coins pretty quickly.

 

[Flynn]

That sucks.

My biggest problem is I have a few friends that like board games in that they like moving little chits around and "doing stuff" but they have no appreciation for strategy at all. Most of the time they get bored halfway through rules explanation and tell me to just start the game. How they are going to try and win before I explain the winning conditions? who knows.

There's one guy in our group who always says, "lets just start playing" and glazes over when we're explaining win conditions. One game he realized on his last move that he had ignored an important win condition and bitched that he wasn't aware of it. Even though we all but held his hand and whispered it into his ear.

So I tried out Race for the Galaxy on the computer. I don't think this game is for me. There is so much stuff to keep track off.

That was my first reaction to the game. It grows on you and eventually you can't stop thinking about it. Also know that the AI is pretty tough.

 

[Xater]

Ok I played a few more games of RFTG after I watched some explanation videos. The one about the iconography was really helpful. I have still not beaten the AI once. I had 2 games that were close but most of the time they totally outlclass me. I have no experience that can help me out with this game, because I don#t know San Juan either. :lol

It is fun though. I just look slike I am really slow at figuring out strategies here.

 

[StoOgE]

The AI on that game is brutal. I win about 25-30% of the time.

 

[Xater]

I think I would like to have the real game but my fear is teaching it to others. I can already see my friends sitting there with questioning faces about all these weird symbols. Maybe I should get San Juan...

 

[FnordChan]

At this week's game night we dusted off a friend's copy of Android, a Fantasy Flight game from a couple of years ago. It's essentially the board game equivalent of Blade Runner and is a gorgeous game, with incredibly high production values and full to the brim with theme. Unfortunately, it's not actually all that fun to play, for a variety of reasons, so it hadn't been brought back to the table for a while. However, since some folks at BGG have been working on variant revised rules for the game, we decided to give it another shot.

The basic breakdown of the game goes like this: it's the not-too-distant cyberpunk future and everyone chooses a character (all of whom come with their own special abilities and personal problems) who travel around a board that shows a city on Earth connected to the Moon by a beanstalk, where they search for clues and interact with each other while investigating a murder, investigating an overarching conspiracy, and pursuing their personal plot. The original release had some problems, and here's what the new rules do to try to fix them.

First off, there's a murder mystery. The original game wanted the mystery to be as ambiguous as possible, so instead of there being a single murderer ala Clue, instead everyone was dealt a character they wanted to be innocent and a character they wanted to be guilty, and over the course of the game you would essentially plant secret evidence chits for or against the suspects and at the end everyone would see how that played out. Unfortunately, the secret chits meant that it was basically impossible to tell how this part of the game was going to play out, so you'd just chuck in evidence and hope for the best. The new rules change this so that there is a single guilty character and you start knowing someone is absolutely innocent. The chits, which used to be positive and negative, are now almost entirely positive and the highest point total represents the character who is convicted (whether they're actually the killer or not), so when you see someone putting down a chit you have a pretty good idea of who they want to be guilty. This part of the game still isn't great - it's kinda confusing and parts of it are still ambiguous - but I reckon it's been improved.

Then there's a conspiracy puzzle, which turns out to be a literal puzzle you assemble, with plots leading to various powers in this cyberpunk world. The conspiracy puzzle used to be very powerful as far as end game scoring; the new rules trim things back and give consistent rewards as you piece it together rather than a bunch of points at the end. This is different more than it's necessarily better.

On top of all this, everyone has a personal storyline they're pursuing, with various levels of happy endings or negative point bad endings that the player can wind up with throughout the game. Part of this story involves getting good action cards, which are personalized for each player. At the same time, there are bad action cards for the other players to try to shaft you with. It used to be that a single player could just stock up on the bad cards and then royally shaft someone. Now the negative cards are distributed (somewhat) evenly among all the players, thus spreading the pain distribution around. It's a distinct improvement over the original.

Finally, the original game had a lot of downtime, as each player would take their turn in full before it passed to the other players. Now the players use only part of their turn before play passes to someone else. This is probably the best improvement in the revised rules.

So, there's a breakdown of how Android plays and how the new rules have altered the game. Overall, I'm still not sure how I feel about the game. On the one hand the theme is wonderful, but on the other hand I still feel that there's far too much going on and that I don't have much control over the game at any given point. Between the conspiracy, the murder mystery, and the personal plots, it feels as if one of the three should be left out and the other two polished up, to give the game some more focus. As it is, there's still a lot happening at once and it's confusing more than anything. Afterward, one of the players commented that there's a really good game in Android that's trying to get out, but it isn't there yet. That said, if you were intrigued by the game, it's almost worth picking up just to admire the production values and world building.

FnordChan

 

[StoOgE]

I think I would like to have the real game but my fear is teaching it to others. I can already see my friends sitting there with questioning faces about all these weird symbols. Maybe I should get San Juan...

I have had a very tough time teaching it to non-gaming friends.

 

[StoOgE]

Birthday gifts are on order.


"Core Games"
Twilight Struggle
Le Havre


"Light/Party Games"
Time's Up (was going to get wits and wagers, but my newly aquired Beyond Balderdash scared me off of another bluffing game)
Lupus in Tabula (5 dollar werewolf/mafia thing)
Bang!

Pretty happy with the pick ups. I almost yanked Bang! for Chrononauts or Saboteur, but the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

I should also be set in light/party games (of which I owned none previously) especially when you include Munchkin and Beyond Balderdash. I still have my eye on Wits and Wagers and possibly Dixit at some point as well (I hate hate hate Apples to Apples though, so I'm slightly afraid of Dixit).

The main reason for the party games is to keep my friends from bringing Apples to Apples and/or Cranium to my house. My immidiate reaction to either of those being pulled out is to grab the nearest sharp object and start stabbing people.

 

[AstroLad]

San Juan is a pretty cool mediumweight gateway game imo. I've never had problems teaching that and I consider it an absolute prerequisite to teaching RFTG for non-gamers.

 

[StoOgE]

San Juan is a pretty cool mediumweight gateway game imo. I've never had problems teaching that and I consider it an absolute prerequisite to teaching RFTG for non-gamers.

I would agree. RFTG is the most streamlined/abstracted role selection/economic engine game out there. San Juan or Puerto Rico has to have been played to come at this game at all. I started with Puerto Rico (have yet to play San Juan actually) and was able to grasp the concepts in RFTG..

but RFTG being card management only is abstracted to the point of nearly impossible for non-gamers to grasp without developing some kind of foundation.

 

[Xater]

The RFTG game can actually be played online right? Would some of you guys here be interested in that?

 

[BattleMonkey]

Yea were excited about Android and no one liked it in the end. The owner of the game kept trying to get us to play it some more but it was just a very dull game that completely seemed to be something other than what we wanted.

 

[AstroLad]

The RFTG game can actually be played online right? Would some of you guys here be interested in that?

Yep -- we've played a couple times before. I can play now -- can we a get another one or two?

edit: or i'd be down for a couple 2p games if you want

 

[BattleMonkey]

Now everyone can get chicks to board game with you:

 

[StoOgE]

I can play RFTG later tonight if y'all are still interested.

I also now own 6 of BGG's top 10 games.

Agricola, Through the Ages, Caylus and El Grande are all that are missing.

It's strange.. Brass and Le Havre are very "under the radar" games to be in the top 10.

 

[StoOgE]

Now everyone can get chicks to board game with you:

1) Aquire rights to Zeus and Herra
2) Retheme it to Jacob and Edward
3) Print Money

 

[MichaelBD]

At this week's game night we dusted off a friend's copy of Android, a Fantasy Flight game from a couple of years ago. It's essentially the board game equivalent of Blade Runner and is a gorgeous game, with incredibly high production values and full to the brim with theme. Unfortunately, it's not actually all that fun to play, for a variety of reasons, so it hadn't been brought back to the table for a while. However, since some folks at BGG have been working on variant revised rules for the game, we decided to give it another shot.

The basic breakdown of the game goes like this: it's the not-too-distant cyberpunk future and everyone chooses a character (all of whom come with their own special abilities and personal problems) who travel around a board that shows a city on Earth connected to the Moon by a beanstalk, where they search for clues and interact with each other while investigating a murder, investigating an overarching conspiracy, and pursuing their personal plot. The original release had some problems, and here's what the new rules do to try to fix them.

First off, there's a murder mystery. The original game wanted the mystery to be as ambiguous as possible, so instead of there being a single murderer ala Clue, instead everyone was dealt a character they wanted to be innocent and a character they wanted to be guilty, and over the course of the game you would essentially plant secret evidence chits for or against the suspects and at the end everyone would see how that played out. Unfortunately, the secret chits meant that it was basically impossible to tell how this part of the game was going to play out, so you'd just chuck in evidence and hope for the best. The new rules change this so that there is a single guilty character and you start knowing someone is absolutely innocent. The chits, which used to be positive and negative, are now almost entirely positive and the highest point total represents the character who is convicted (whether they're actually the killer or not), so when you see someone putting down a chit you have a pretty good idea of who they want to be guilty. This part of the game still isn't great - it's kinda confusing and parts of it are still ambiguous - but I reckon it's been improved.

Then there's a conspiracy puzzle, which turns out to be a literal puzzle you assemble, with plots leading to various powers in this cyberpunk world. The conspiracy puzzle used to be very powerful as far as end game scoring; the new rules trim things back and give consistent rewards as you piece it together rather than a bunch of points at the end. This is different more than it's necessarily better.

On top of all this, everyone has a personal storyline they're pursuing, with various levels of happy endings or negative point bad endings that the player can wind up with throughout the game. Part of this story involves getting good action cards, which are personalized for each player. At the same time, there are bad action cards for the other players to try to shaft you with. It used to be that a single player could just stock up on the bad cards and then royally shaft someone. Now the negative cards are distributed (somewhat) evenly among all the players, thus spreading the pain distribution around. It's a distinct improvement over the original.

Finally, the original game had a lot of downtime, as each player would take their turn in full before it passed to the other players. Now the players use only part of their turn before play passes to someone else. This is probably the best improvement in the revised rules.

So, there's a breakdown of how Android plays and how the new rules have altered the game. Overall, I'm still not sure how I feel about the game. On the one hand the theme is wonderful, but on the other hand I still feel that there's far too much going on and that I don't have much control over the game at any given point. Between the conspiracy, the murder mystery, and the personal plots, it feels as if one of the three should be left out and the other two polished up, to give the game some more focus. As it is, there's still a lot happening at once and it's confusing more than anything. Afterward, one of the players commented that there's a really good game in Android that's trying to get out, but it isn't there yet. That said, if you were intrigued by the game, it's almost worth picking up just to admire the production values and world building.

FnordChan

I played my first game of Android after having it sit on a shelf for almost a year. We had mixed reactions as well, but I want to give it another try.

 

[FnordChan]

I played my first game of Android after having it sit on a shelf for almost a year. We had mixed reactions as well, but I want to give it another try.

I would definitely recommend playing with the variant rules I linked to above. Let us know how your second play goes!

FnordChan

 

[Freakinchair]

Alright I need recommendations for a board game that supports up to 8 players (I know that's alot!). My brother has gotten into board games recently and has a whole lot of friends who want to play too. This has led to alot of people wanting to play - but were stuck at a 5-6 player cap (where most of the games are actually worse off when played at the cap).

Do any of you fine gentleman (or women) know of any, hopefully fun, games for a large party?

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Alright I need recommendations for a board game that supports up to 8 players (I know that's alot!). My brother has gotten into board games recently and has a whole lot of friends who want to play too. This has led to alot of people wanting to play - but were stuck at a 5-6 player cap (where most of the games are actually worse off when played at the cap).

Do any of you fine gentleman (or women) know of any, hopefully fun, games for a large party?

7+ player game recommendations seem to be my specialty around here.

Arkham Horror goes up to 8.
Bang with the expansion goes up to 8 (7 without).
Citadels goes up to 7.
Slide 5 goes up to 10.
Formula D goes up to 10.
The Resistance goes up to 10.
Red November goes up to 8.
Saboteur goes up to 10.

 

[StoOgE]

Alright I need recommendations for a board game that supports up to 8 players (I know that's alot!). My brother has gotten into board games recently and has a whole lot of friends who want to play too. This has led to alot of people wanting to play - but were stuck at a 5-6 player cap (where most of the games are actually worse off when played at the cap).

Do any of you fine gentleman (or women) know of any, hopefully fun, games for a large party?

8 is tricky with a "legit" board game.

RoboRally and Formula D are the first two off the top of my head. They are both racing games that have some strategy but are more about watching insanity happen than anything else.

Arkham Horror also supports that many, but I have no idea how long an 8 player game would take.

You can get Pitchcar which is a dexterity based game instead of a typical board game, but is a good bit of fun.

Other than that you are stuck with card games which are lighter fair, but have some strategy.

Citadels (7 only I think? I've never played with more than 6)
Diamant
Bang! (will need an expansion I think)
Saboteur
Red November
Nuns on the Run
Shadow Hunters (though, you could just buy a werewolf game since they are essentially the same and save some scratch)
Werewolf

After that you are dealing with pure party games.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Shadow Hunters (though, you could just buy a werewolf game since they are essentially the same)
Werewolf

From what I've read so far, if you're going to go with one of these you may want to look in The Resistance instead if you have issues with the traditional Werewolf mechanics.

 

[StoOgE]

From what I've read so far, if you're going to go with one of these you may want to look in The Resistance instead if you have issues with the traditional Werewolf mechanics.

I've always just played werewolf with crumpled pieces of paper since there isn't really any reason to buy a version of it. I just did get a little 5 dollar bit so it will be a bit more professional looking at parties. I laugh at some of the 20 dollar versions of werewolf for sale out there though. I mean, really?

But yeah, that new game looks pretty slick since everyone gets to actually play the game instead of someone having to play game master. Bang! works with a similar concept to Werewolf though luck becomes a pretty big factor there.

 

[AstroLad]

AH is really bad with 5+. I find Formula D a bit dry but I've never played it with more than 4. My recs, really just reinforcing those already mentioned:
-Robo Rally: Quite fun and crazy on a big map. Also light/mediumweight which is nice.
-Citadels: Cheap and you can actually play with up to 8 with the bundled expansion. Some think it's too chaotic but I love it. Lots of backstabbing and treachery.
-Pitchcar: Had forgotten about this even though I own it and 3 expansions, but it's a deceptively great dexterity game. Bit pricey though because of the wood components.

And then yes Werewolf and all its variants. Better have at least 8 for those though.

 

[MichaelBD]

Alright I need recommendations for a board game that supports up to 8 players (I know that's alot!). My brother has gotten into board games recently and has a whole lot of friends who want to play too. This has led to alot of people wanting to play - but were stuck at a 5-6 player cap (where most of the games are actually worse off when played at the cap).

Do any of you fine gentleman (or women) know of any, hopefully fun, games for a large party?

Twilight Imperium 3 with the Shattered Empires expansion. Yeah it will set you back $100 plus 10 hours every time you play it, but it's worth it.

 

[joeyjoejoeshabadoo]

But yeah, that new game looks pretty slick since everyone gets to actually play the game instead of someone having to play game master. Bang! works with a similar concept to Werewolf though luck becomes a pretty big factor there.

MANCATO!!
Oh the bad Italian accent stereotypes that come out during this game are gold. I traded away The Bullet (because you really don't need any of the expansions) so I'll need to buy the base game again. Good times.

 

[StoOgE]

MANCATO!!
Oh the bad Italian accent stereotypes that come out during this game are gold. I traded away The Bullet (because you really don't need any of the expansions) so I'll need to buy the base game again. Good times.

:lol

It really is a good party game. And yes, shouting MANCATO is the best part.

I should be getting the base game this week. I was going to get the bullet, but it just seemed so unnecessary. I don't really need 50 character cards.

I might get Dodge City for 8 players at some point.

 

[AstroLad]

We need to decide on a good 8P game for our GAF BGG.CON meetup.

 

[StoOgE]

We need to decide on a good 8P game for our GAF BGG.CON meetup.

Roborally or Citadels are my preferences.

Most 8 player games are lighter fare. Those two have the most meat on them.

 

[AstroLad]

Played Citadels with my wife and Flynn & friends at PAX East. It was fun. The only downside is the kingmaker problem, but if you swap out Warlord with the expansion card I found out that gets pretty well mitigated.

 

[StoOgE]

Played Citadels with my wife and Flynn & friends at PAX East. It was fun. The only downside is the kingmaker problem, but if you swap out Warlord with the expansion card I found out that gets pretty well mitigated.

I've never played the game with a group that strategic.. is that the deal where two player just flip the king card back and forth?

I've heard some grumbling on BGG about such an issue.

 

[AstroLad]

I've never played the game with a group that strategic.. is that the deal where two player just flip the king card back and forth?

I've heard some grumbling on BGG about such an issue.

Sorry, I mean to use the common noun: In game theory, a kingmaker is a player who lacks sufficient resources or position to win at a given game, but possesses enough remaining resources to decide which of the remaining viable players will eventually win.

 

[StoOgE]

Sorry, I mean to use the common noun: In game theory, a kingmaker is a player who lacks sufficient resources or position to win at a given game, but possesses enough remaining resources to decide which of the remaining viable players will eventually win.

yeah, I know that is what it normally means.. but I've heard grumblings that there is a way with the right card combinations for two players to dominate the king player throughout the game so that one of them always has first choice in card selection.

Kingmaker is really a problem with most directly competitive games to some extent. Mall of Horror is a lot of fun, but the winner seems to come down to who has the most friends left alive at the end of the game.