The Board Game Thread

[Cuttooth]

Played a couple of games of Watergate for the first time today and it's immediately become one of those games that I can see myself wanting to play at a moment's notice.

Similar card mechanics to Twilight Struggle where you choose to either play the value of a card or the event text, but much more streamlined into something you can complete in about half an hour.

Out of Imperial Struggle (which I have not got on with at all), and this, it's Watergate that seems like the natural successor to Twilight Struggle.

[Zilnad]

I really want to try Watergate but I only managed to convince my wife to play two games of Twilight Struggle before having to admit it just wasn't for her

[Cuttooth]

It's much less demanding than TS if that helps.

[Hypes]

I still need to learn/play Imperial Struggle. Got sent a pack full of errata corrections and replacement cards for it the other day

[Zilnad]

Finally caved and bought the Thousand Year Old Vampire PDF. Really looking forward to this.

[Zilnad]

Thousand Year Old Vampire is an amazing solo RPG so far. I love it!

Taking inspiration from Ghost of Tsushima, my vampire is a fallen samurai who has lost his honour.

This "memory" has been the highlight of my afternoon's session:

Hiding from the daylight, my vampire meets a child...

The girl, Yuna, secretly brings me food and says I need to eat to get better; the rice is like wet ash in my mouth but I force myself to keep it down lest I offend and upset Yuna's naive smile, which beams in my direction.

Later in the story, my vampire awoke in China after 100 years of unexplained sleep. He then meets a descendant of the child.

"Yuna" I cry out before realising my mistake. She would have grown old and passed by now but I do recognise her features in the face of this woman before me. She introduces herself as Aoi, Yuna's granddaughter! Yuna, what glorious fate has reunited us here, across the ocean and across generations?

And then something awful happened.

She tried to leave me. She is no more. And I am less.

My vampire now has no memory of any of this.

[Cuttooth]

We've abandoned our second game of Star Wars Rebellion for the night to pick up in the morning and I think I hate it.

I'm desperately hoping it'll click eventually, maybe when I take a crack at being the Rebels (and when we both stop forgetting key rules midway through the game) but there's just an enduring feeling that there isn't actually that much interesting going on with this game.

[Hexx]

We've abandoned our second game of Star Wars Rebellion for the night to pick up in the morning and I think I hate it.

I'm desperately hoping it'll click eventually, maybe when I take a crack at being the Rebels (and when we both stop forgetting key rules midway through the game) but there's just an enduring feeling that there isn't actually that much interesting going on with this game.

I really can't agree with that - but it's hard to think of specific thing you could be doing wrong

[Imrahil]

Yep, I ended up barely playing it more than a few times, and the last one was a slog.

Plus, I'd already been playing War of the Ring for a couple of years, which is one of the very best 2-player epic boardgames ever made (and shares some similarities) and it rather spoilt me I think.

Rebellion can't hold a candle to it.

[Hexx]

Aww that's a shame. I genuinely love Rebellion (Star Wars fanboy might help) and other than the terrible combat I love pretty much all of it.

[Rex Kramer]

Picked up Marvel United from Amazon.com. Doesn't seem to be available in the UK yet but total cost from US including VAT and shipping was only just over £35 so it seemed like a decent deal.

https://www.amazon.com/Marvel-United-Co ... s9dHJ1ZQ==

EDIT: Ordered it Weds and it's being delivered today. That's crazy.

[Carlos]

After reading the rules online I picked up a copy of Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress and its brilliant. Me and a friend built out own Warhammer 40k WHQ variant back in the 1990's but this is a lot tighter. It starts out reading like another Fantasy Flight game with rules for the sake of rules but just like other GW games it turns out its pretty tight and quite easy to follow.

[Trelliz]

After reading the rules online I picked up a copy of Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress and its brilliant. Me and a friend built out own Warhammer 40k WHQ variant back in the 1990's but this is a lot tighter. It starts out reading like another Fantasy Flight game with rules for the sake of rules but just like other GW games it turns out its pretty tight and quite easy to follow.

Bear in mind that it's been discontinued (to make way for the next one, classic GW) so the expansions are only going to get more and more expensive from here on out

[Cheeky Devlin]

My friends and I started our Gloomhaven campaign last night. And we got owned. Managing your cards is so key to the game, and we spaffed away too many one use abilities in the first room.

We're trying again tonight.

Massive quote bump, but my Wife and I just started Gloomhaven today and this is exactly what happened to us.

Spent a good 6 hours setting it all up and getting our head around how the game works only to get to the very last Bandit Archer in the first scenario and lost due to exhaustion. If we'd have one more card each we would have gotten one more turn which would have been enough to kill the guy and beat the scenario.

Still we came to the same conclusion, that we'd used up too many one-shot abilities early on. That and we probably didn't interpret some of the rules properly. But we're gonna try again on Tuesday night.

So far though it's excellent. We're looking forward to getting deeper into it as well. I'm especially interested in seeing what some of the other classes are.

[Cuttooth]

We've abandoned our second game of Star Wars Rebellion for the night to pick up in the morning and I think I hate it.

I'm desperately hoping it'll click eventually, maybe when I take a crack at being the Rebels (and when we both stop forgetting key rules midway through the game) but there's just an enduring feeling that there isn't actually that much interesting going on with this game.

While not a complete 180 on Rebellion we're much happier now we’ve played Rise of the Empire, in which our first game saw:

- Darth Vader eat gooseberry fool on the very first turn because of a hilariously powerful new tactics card for the Rebels
- On hearing this news Obi-Wan Kenobi I guess immediately comes out of hiding to become an active Rebel operative
- Saw Gerrera and Chirrut Imwe become a two man wrecking crew ambushing Imperial ground troops
- The Empire slowly realising where the Rebel base must be and diverting the Death Star towards it
- The Rebels revealing where the base is as an act of inspirational defiance
- One big final battle between the entire Rebel fleet and ground forces against the looming Death Star, which is blown up
- All this happening above Tatooine, with Luke Skywalker I guess never finding out who his father was?

It’s still a mess of a game where any flow is broken up by repeatedly having to remind ourselves of rules (accidentally still breaking some in hindsight) and research contradictions. It does also feel like the variance from game to game will end up more limited than I was expecting, but I’m glad we actually had enough fun with it that we’ll probably play it every few months.

We picked up Calico and Railroad Ink: Green recently, which are nice and chill for the most part, right up to the point where they’re suddenly not.

[Clarkman]

Is anyone going to the UKGE in Birmingham NEC next weekend? I'll be there on the Friday.

[Zilnad]

Hell no

[DML]

Is anyone going to the UKGE in Birmingham NEC next weekend? I'll be there on the Friday.

I would really love to. Was there two years ago for one day and really loved it.

[Drumstick]

Covidity in this country is too strong right now.

[Clarkman]

Yeah, for sure a fair reason. Personally I had Covid in January and have received one dose of vax. At this point, I'm ready to live my life again and I don't fancy denying myself some good memories with friends.