Board Games

[MIJB#19]

Originally Posted by sachmo71

are you guys going to try risk:legacy?

I wish it was available overhere already. That game sounds very promising...

[Arctus]

Originally Posted by sachmo71

are you guys going to try risk:legacy?

I am 6 games into a Risk Legacy Campaign. It really is a fantastic game. I would highly recommend it. I don't want to go into too many details since the game is pretty much one big spoiler.

There are four of us that have played every game. Our fifth spot has been split between three different players.

I haven't seen anyone else mention this, but it also has one of the cleanest set of rules that I've ever seen in a board game.

[ColtCrazy]

Got the old version of Conquest of the Empire out the other day during our 5th grade class party. I have a good group that can handle strategy games this year, but that old game is getting delicate. How could is the newer version? Might pick that one up to play.

[Barkeep49]

As someone who loves risk I wish I were still in college where I could easily have gotten a group together to play 15 games.

[QuikSand]

Here's a supposed online implementation of a board game that I'd really like to play... but I get a very buggy setup when running it.

Formula De online Free Beta Test | BoardGameGeek | BoardGameGeek

Anyone here have any thoughts? It appears to have multiplayer capability... just sayin.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Here's a supposed online implementation of a board game that I'd really like to play... but I get a very buggy setup when running it.

Formula De online Free Beta Test | BoardGameGeek | BoardGameGeek

Anyone here have any thoughts? It appears to have multiplayer capability... just sayin.

It's VERY rough. It's fun just to goof around, but I wouldn't recommend it if you're looking for a legitimate game or multiplayer game. I'm a huge Formula De fan. I tried it, but just couldn't deal with the many bugs.

[QuikSand]

Well, I haven't even gotten into game quality -- I get a graphical mess, making it impossible to follow. I mean technically buggy, as in maybe it's incompatible with my XP setup or something.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Well, I haven't even gotten into game quality -- I get a graphical mess, making it impossible to follow. I mean technically buggy, as in maybe it's incompatible with my XP setup or something.

Yeah, I was able to get into it, but I do remember some issues where objects would be misplaced on the screen.

[bob]

Man, I feel like I was born in the wrong generation sometimes. By the time I hit college, PC and console games were all the rage. No way I could have gotten together 1, much less 15 games of Risk.

[Peregrine]

I believe there is already a Formula De Vassal module that plays multiplayer?

[dzilla77]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

I believe there is already a Formula De Vassal module that plays multiplayer?

Yes and it appears to work decently in the 10 minutes or so that I have played with it. Also includes the rules which seems like a breach of copyright.

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by bob

Man, I feel like I was born in the wrong generation sometimes. By the time I hit college, PC and console games were all the rage. No way I could have gotten together 1, much less 15 games of Risk.

Why I mostly play solitaire games. I don't know enough people that play board games.

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by bob

Man, I feel like I was born in the wrong generation sometimes. By the time I hit college, PC and console games were all the rage. No way I could have gotten together 1, much less 15 games of Risk.

I'm definitely of the computer/video game generation, but board/card games were big at my college and so finding a group for a game was never difficult and there were a couple spots (including the lounge on my floor my last 2 years) where you could pretty reliably count on a game to be found.

Now I'm in the same spot as Mustang where I don't have a group of people I can count on to play games with anymore.

[Warhammer]

Start your own game group!

That is seriously what I did. I kept the flame burning by playing games with the family for a while (parents, brother, sister in law, etc.). Then I mentioned it to similar interest co-workers. Found one who was interested, who introduced me to his college roommate. He knew this other guy, who knew another guy. Long story short, we've got a solid group of about 30 people that come out regularly.

MSBGC - http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/MSBGC-club/

On top of that, we have our own game convention that some people from the group started.

FrontPage

We also run gaming at other local conventions.

http://www.midsouthcon.org/
http://www.shadowcon.org/ - Never realized it, I'm in one of the pictures on the site eating lunch rather than gaming, kind of funny.

[Peregrine]

If there are game stores in your area, a lot of them have board gaming nights - some of the ones in my area get pretty large groups of people. If they don't have this - ask them why not!

[DanGarion]

Our board game night turned out a success. We played 1 game of Pandemic and 2 games of Munchkin. Ended up having 6 people total so we had to switch to something everyone could play. First game of Munchkin was a struggle because a couple of the people hadn't played before but after that everything was smooth. My friend's girlfriend who seemed to not be understanding the game ended up kicking all our asses in one swoop in the 2nd game. We were so worried about someone else winning that by the time she got to level 7, sold all her items and then fought a monster no one had anything they could do to prevent her from winning!

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Mustang

Why I mostly play solitaire games. I don't know enough people that play board games.

Solitaire board games? Any good ones you might recommend? I usually have board game play at our poker tournaments at my home as people get knocked out, but would love to have some good solitaire options as well.

[Glengoyne]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Solitaire board games? Any good ones you might recommend? I usually have board game play at our poker tournaments at my home as people get knocked out, but would love to have some good solitaire options as well.

Here is the first thing that comes to mind.

Phantom Leader
This is a solo game that has you running a Vietnam Air campaign.



Hornet Leader if you are more interested in current equipment.

There is also another Dan Verssen game that is print and play called Corsair Leader or somesuch, where you print up the components for free and run a campaign in the WWII Solomons. The site is Dan Verssen Games (DVG)


Here is a Geeklist dedicated to this topic. There are lots of others, geeklists that is, a quick search on BGG or maybe Google will give lots of options.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Glengoyne

Here is the first thing that comes to mind.

Phantom Leader
This is a solo game that has you running a Vietnam Air campaign.

Hornet Leader if you are more interested in current equipment.

There is also another Dan Verssen game that is print and play called Corsair Leader or somesuch, where you print up the components for free and run a campaign in the WWII Solomons. The site is Dan Verssen Games (DVG)


Here is a Geeklist dedicated to this topic. There are lots of others, geeklists that is, a quick search on BGG or maybe Google will give lots of options.

Very cool! Will have to check some of these out.

Quick question. The Dan Verssen games......are they all print out games? Do you pay for the game and then you have access to the files that you print out at home? Just making sure I was understanding that correctly.

[Peregrine]

B-17, Queen of the Skies is my favorite solo game - it's an old Avalon Hill game but you can find a copy on Ebay frequently, or you can play it on Vassal and find the rules online - you run a bomber trying to make it out alive through many missions.

Also, some other games that are made for multiple players play quite well as solo games - especially more abstract games - Ingenious and Tayu are ones I play solo occasionally.

[Warhammer]

There's also a Dr. Who Adventure Game which is solitaire and print and play. It's pretty cool and there is a Yahoo!Group dedicated to its development.

[Warhammer]

Agricola solitaire is solid as well.

[dzilla77]

Race for the Galaxy has some solitare rules in one of the expansions I think.

Also, you can download solitaire rules for Thunderstone from AEG's website.

[Glengoyne]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Very cool! Will have to check some of these out.

Quick question. The Dan Verssen games......are they all print out games? Do you pay for the game and then you have access to the files that you print out at home? Just making sure I was understanding that correctly.

Well I went out to the site to check it out, and make sure I understood. There are a number of print and play games there. I'm noting that they are calling them Vassal modules now, where as I thought they would be .pdf. So You'll have to do some research on those or ask someone here with experience with Vassal, as I have none. The print and play versions look to be $15-$30, and they are at the bottom of the site I mentioned. Edit...to note that there are plenty of .pdf options for these as well as a couple of Vassal modules. Not the "Free" I described above, but it does appear that Corsair Leader is there for $15.

There are boxed versions of a number of them...including U-Boat Leader which sounds interesting. Those run $50-$90. More than I expected, but I've given Phantom Leader a spin, and it was a lot of fun.

[Glengoyne]

Another site with Solitaire game information is Victory Point Games. This is a site founded by Alan Emrich of 4X game fame and MOO 3 infamy. Not every game here is solitaire, but many are. Also the production quality of these isn't premium by a long shot, but the components are professionally made.

There is even a section here for some of Bucc's students with a series of articles on getting your game designs published.

[Danny]

The game I own that can be soloed.

The Dungeon & Dragons Coop Adventure Line: Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt.
Dungeonquest
Elder Sign
Roll through the ages
Rallyman
Descent (with some artscow cards and new rules for a variant someone created)
Arkham Horror
Conquest of Planet Earth
Pandemic, Defenders of the Realm
Ghost Stories
Lord of the Rings
Mage Knight
Onirim
Race for the Galaxy
Space Hulk Death Angel
Lord the Rings the Card Game
Thunderstone
Yggdrassil

Out of these the games I personally enjoy soloing the most are D&D games, Dungeonquest, Onirim, LOTR: The Card Game, and while I haven't played it yet as I just got it, probably Mage Knight. Most of the others I think I have only soloed once or less, so they may be fun that way too, but I dont think 1 play is enough to say.

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Solitaire board games? Any good ones you might recommend?

Tons of solitaire stuff. Number one on my list would be Arkham Horror. B-17 was mentioned. Sub games - Silent War (WWII Pacific) and Steel Wolves (Atlantic), Ambush series by Avalon Hill. While not the greatest, I like Princess Ryan's Star Marines. Then of course there is Advanced Squad Leader although Warhammer could talk more about that.. I'm too scared of the 2,000 page manual....

solitaire | Tags | BoardGameGeek | BoardGameGeek

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Danny

Mage Knight

If you are talking about the minis, you should be banned from posting in this thread.

[Danny]

You should be banned for not knowing about the new Mage Knight board game :P
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9...ght-board-game

[Danny]

The board game and minis game really have nothing in common minus the name which was used for marketing purposes.

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Danny

The board game and minis game really have nothing in common minus the name which was used for marketing purposes.

I know that. I'm giving you a hard time...

[Danny]

Originally Posted by Mustang

I know that. I'm giving you a hard time...

I know . Im looking forward to playing Mage Knight, just need the motivation to get through the two rulebooks.

[Lonnie]

Saw Mage Knight board game today at the game shop. Passed on it because they finally had an Arkham Horror base game in stock. It seemed like every time I went in they had 10 expansions and not the base game.

So we started learning our first Arkham game around 8 pm and wrapped it up around midnight. Not bad since the three of us had never played and we were slogging through the rules as we played. We lost of course, and as we finished and were packing up there were several oh we could of done this or that moments as we were reading cards and locations. Fun stuff, home we get back to it soon.

[mckerney]

I like Warhammer 40k: Death Angel for solo gaming.

[Vince, Pt. II]

We also got through an entire game of Arkham last night. 3 players, fighting Yig. We had the Private Eye, the Professor and some chick who played like a spellcaster. We ended up winning fairly comfortably - closed the final gate with the monster at 7/10. We got incredibly lucky with Mythos cards; ended up getting a monster surge more times than not, and probably ended up pulling 10 monsters off the board with the events on the cards alone. Our characters seemed nice and strong too - the Private Eye seems borderline overpowered, while my character (the professor) had an awesome pre-game draw with a magic weapon (+4) and healing stone, which made me quite formidable cleaning up the bad guys. Didn't get to try casting spells much, as early on we had a card in play that forced someone to discard three spells to eliminate a threat, so I was quickly out of spells.

It was still a little slow going as we got accustomed to the flow of the game (took about 3 hours), but I think next time we put it on the table we'll be much faster.

Edit: we also found it easier to keep track of Stamina, Sanity and Money on a pad of paper rather than using all the little tokens.

[Honolulu_Blue]

I forget. What does the private eye do again? Joe Diamond, is it? I never remember him being too terribly powerful.

While I am not too terribly familiar with all the new characters some of the best characters in the game are the researcher (allows any player one re-roll a turn), the expedition leader (can prevent one loss of sanity/stamina for any player per turn) and a couple of the others.

I'm a big fan of the reformed cultist. I've always had a lot of success with that character. For some reason I've also had good luck with the magician, the Great Drake or whatever his name is. I think it had to do with lucky cards than anything with him.

Handyman is also fantastic.

[Vince, Pt. II]

The Private Eye has a nice blend of talent, I think he's 5/6 for Sanity/Stamina. Can up his speed to 6 at max, starts with a bunch of weapons and money, and when he spends a clue token to roll an extra die, he gets two dice instead of just one.

The Professor has 7 Sanity, and any time he suffers a loss of Sanity he reduces it by 1 (minimum of 0). While he's slow as all hell (max speed of 3) and has very little Stamina (3), with the right gear he's pretty tough.

[Danny]

Originally Posted by mckerney

I like Warhammer 40k: Death Angel for solo gaming.

Just for people looking it up, it's actually Space Hulk: Death Angel, though Space Hulk is set in the Warhammer 40k universe.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Picked up 7 Wonders and Ticket to Ride recently...

I am really enjoying 7 Wonders. Pretty simple gameplay, though it's difficult to explain without confusing someone. Playing through a round or two of the game usually gives everyone an idea on what to do. I love the concept of the shared hand - knowing that you only get to play one of these cards and you have to hand the rest of them over to your neighbors is pretty awesome. In our few games thus far (about 4 games), it seems that military is a bit overpowered - if you pass on playing (or burning) a military card it's a huge point swing. I think we may end up toning it down to 1/2/3 points for a victory rather than 1/3/5 if we continue to feel this way.

When I first read the rules to Ticket to Ride, I was actually disappointed. I had expected a pretty simple game, but this game is beyond simple. It is a lot more fun in action than I thought it would be, however. I've only played the 2 player variant, but I lost 2 of 3 to my roommate last night. I ended up one turn away from completing my 6th destination ticket, and the point swing cost me the game. I'm wondering about how the game will play with more players - with only two of us, we were doing a good enough job of blocking each other and competing for routes as it was. With more players and more time between each turn, I'd imagine it gets pretty hectic.

[Fidatelo]

I don't know if this counts, but yesterday I discovered a couple things.

1) Thunderstone is available as a Facebook game and you can play it on there. I've never played the board game before, but the 'campaign mode' on the FB version is pretty enjoyable so far.

2) There is a site called Yucata where a bunch of board games have apparently licensed themselves to be played for free on some hobby guy's server (or something). I haven't tried playing any, but there are some solid games on there (amidst a bunch I've never heard of) including Thunderstone, Stone Age, Tyrus, and Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers.

[Glengoyne]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

Picked up 7 Wonders and Ticket to Ride recently...

I am really enjoying 7 Wonders. ... In our few games thus far (about 4 games), it seems that military is a bit overpowered - if you pass on playing (or burning) a military card it's a huge point swing. I think we may end up toning it down to 1/2/3 points for a victory rather than 1/3/5 if we continue to feel this way.

...

I wouldn't tone down the military points any. Just get a bit more experience, and a feel for how the different elements come together for a really big score. You can completely ignore military, and come away with a win. You can also invest just enough to keep your neighbors honest and even sneak in a victory chit or two, if they take you for granted. There are a number of threads regarding this on the Seven Wonders forum on BGG. Check them out, I think the game is pretty well balanced.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by Glengoyne

I wouldn't tone down the military points any. Just get a bit more experience, and a feel for how the different elements come together for a really big score. You can completely ignore military, and come away with a win. You can also invest just enough to keep your neighbors honest and even sneak in a victory chit or two, if they take you for granted. There are a number of threads regarding this on the Seven Wonders forum on BGG. Check them out, I think the game is pretty well balanced.

Definitely agree with this - I think the military part of the game is well balanced with the rest - it's just that when you first start playing, some elements (like military, or science) may seem to dominate because that's how that game played out. As you play more you'll see that there are a lot of ways to win - specializing in one area can help, but you can also win (and I have multiple times) by just getting average points in many areas.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Good advice. I've won each of our games so far with a (mostly) balanced approach - my set up has NEVER worked for science, so I have actually played zero science cards thus far. I'm looking forward to getting more games under my belt.

[Solecismic]

I've played this three times - all in one session with a fairly experienced gamer teaching our group. The one game I won I employed a science set-up. The other two games I went more with the military and didn't fare so well.

It seems to be an all-or-nothing approach.

[Vince, Pt. II]

So I'm looking for a clarification on two things. The first I'm about 99% certain I'm right, but looking for support. The second I have no idea on.

1. Longest Trip in Ticket to Ride.
This is the longest continuous path of train cars, correct? One of our players was arguing that you cannot depart from the same city more than once on your trip. One of the players had four separate departures from Omaha, and the western side of their train looped, so you could continuously go from the east coast, to Omaha, to the west coast and then back to the east coast (via Omaha a second time) without counting the same train cars twice. My (firm) position was that each one of those train cars counted.

2. Arkham Horror - Earning an "Explored" token from going through a gate.
There are several ways (Spells, encounter results, Items) that an investigator can "Immediately return to Arkham" while in another world. If you return via this method, do you earn an 'Explored' token? I'm really not sure about this one. If you do, it seems that these abilities/spells/etc are extremely powerful - then again, they're fairly rare, so perhaps they are supposed to be that powerful. Then again, if you do NOT, they seem incredibly weak - I can see very few instances where I'd actually want to use them.

We're still pretty green in our Arkham experience, and I've found several things that seem underpowered that I'm sure I just haven't explored enough yet (Silver Twilight Lodge and becoming the Deputy being two of them) to fully understand their strengths. Right now, these seem to fall into that category (we haven't been playing that they grant an Explore token).

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

1. Longest Trip in Ticket to Ride.
This is the longest continuous path of train cars, correct? One of our players was arguing that you cannot depart from the same city more than once on your trip. One of the players had four separate departures from Omaha, and the western side of their train looped, so you could continuously go from the east coast, to Omaha, to the west coast and then back to the east coast (via Omaha a second time) without counting the same train cars twice. My (firm) position was that each one of those train cars counted.

You are correct. Loops count as part of that longest train route.

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

2. Arkham Horror - Earning an "Explored" token from going through a gate.
There are several ways (Spells, encounter results, Items) that an investigator can "Immediately return to Arkham" while in another world. If you return via this method, do you earn an 'Explored' token?

If you return to Arkham by any means, you get the explored token.

[Fidatelo]

I ordered Legend of Drizzt a few weeks ago and it finally arrived late last week. I played solo a few times over the weekend and again last night, and my early impressions are quite good. I love that I can play by myself, which is the main reason I bought it. The components are of very nice quality, and the mechanics seem fun. There also seems to be a good amount of variety in the heroes to make replay-ability of the adventures fairly high just by mixing up the characters involved.

Anyways, it might not be the best group game (I can't say as I haven't played with others yet), but as a solo experience it looks quite promising.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by Mustang

If you return to Arkham by any means, you get the explored token.

Agreed.

[Barkeep49]

In addition to our weekly class sessions we've now started weekly game play sessions. I taught a whole bunch of kids Ascension today. It was funny because one kid went on his second turn "this game is SO confusing" to saying on his 3rd turn, with no sense of irony, "This game is so much fun." I guess he got over his confusion quickly.