Boardgames - What have you played recently?

Recently (since beginning of Jan) :
  • Zepter von Zavandor (based on the original Outpost)
  • AuZtralia
  • Heat: Pedal to the Metal
  • Die Neuen Entdecker (aka Endecker 2, 1999)
  • Hoplomachus Remastered (and Victorum)
  • Britannia
  • High Frontier 4 All (base game only; still took us 6 hours)
 
Just played On Mars for the first time - a very cool ‘engine builder’ and ‘worker placement’ game. It has an interesting twist where the actions available to you vary based on whether you are currently in orbit or in the planet surface. There are also mechanism which allow you to take supplementary actions and the array of available actions varies based on how you develop your engine. It‘s a cool game.
 
Miss H rearranged her bedroom yesterday, giving me access to a cupboard that I've not been able to get to in yonks. Inside, was Reiner Knizia's The Lord of the Rings cooperative game, and I thought I'd give it a solo spin as Frodo and Sam.

Oh dear.

While I can remember how to play, I can't remember how to win...

Must try again later.
 
Been getting more into board games lately, regular groups with friends, plus kids as they grow older.

Also playing loads of games on www.boardgamearena.com -- the asynchronous / turn-based play makes it dead easy to have a few games going at once and make turns throughout the day. Feel free to add me as a friend (aj3v4n5) if you're also on it.
 
Last night we played Heat for the first time - what a great game! It really captures the feel of racing, with careful decisions needing to be taken over speed and ‘heat’ management. The sheer joy of managing to pull off a perfect overtake with slip stream, or positioning your car to perfectly take a corner, is palpable. Even the guys playing who aren’t really into cars enjoyed it. Those of us who are in to cars could see how the mechanics of the game invoked the reality of driving, in a similar way to how you would hope a war game reflects things like flanking.

I heartily recommend it, and it has the bonus of being on general release so you don’t have to dig through Kickstarter or eBay to get a copy.
 
Played my seventh game of Everdell last night with the family, a nice worker-placement tableau builder that ramps up nicely as the game is played.

Miss H had a strong start, but sadly failed to capitalise on it and I won.

I'm not allowed to play this with anyone else, in case I get too good at it. Unfortunately, Mrs H really struggles to "get it" and so we don't play it as much as I might like.
 
Recently (since mid Feb):

  • Jiangnan Life of Gentry
  • Mindbug
  • Adel Verpflichtet
  • Bitoku
  • Forests of Pangaia
  • Tindaya
  • At the Gates of Loyang
  • Marracash
  • Favoriten
  • Thunder Road: Vendetta
  • Villagers
  • Space Base
  • Return to Dark Tower
  • The City
  • Heat
  • Frostpunk
 
Tonight we played an old favourite - Forbidden Stars. What a great game; the 4X-light strategic layer, the asymmetric factions that are evocative of their 40k roots, the deck building combat system. Love it.
 
English Heritage Risk.
It's English, so yes, no Ireland, Scotland or Wales... So it's ahistorical and indeed spatially false but what the heck.
All the regions are named after the preeminent EH property in the region.
It's RISK, the snowball juggernaut mechanism is still there.
The 10mm minis are fun. There are funky RNG Power cards that are cool.
Yellow won. It's not terribly well balanced but time restrainted and quite fun. I can see it getting play.
I can also see me using the board and the rules separately with another map or another ruleset.

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Last night we played Hegemony for the first time. Another great asymmetric game, this one a bit more of a worker placement / engine builder game. The four player factions are: the Working Class, the Middle Class, the Capitalists, and the State.

The Working Class carried the day, but the game was really great fun for all of us and the play styles for each group are different.
 
Enjoyed two games of the medieval fantasy deck builder Dominion on Weds last. Quite enjoy this game which is never quite the same as the piles of cards is usually shifted before each game, although we kept it stable for these two.

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Since early June:
  • Thunder Road: Vendetta (probably about 5 times)
  • Faiyum (Friedmann Friese, building up a province in ancient egypt)
  • Dark Darker Darkest (with the updated rules)
  • Bitoku
  • Border Reivers (GMT, 16th century Scotland-England raiders)
  • Dune: Imperium + Rise of Ix
  • Circadians: First Light
 
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Played War of the Worlds - the New Wave tonight. Ben was the Humans, I was the (superior) Martians. Tense neck and neck right to the end, the Humans won by a typical shabby trick of sending in a scout dog with a bomb to do the last point of damage needed for the win.
Oh well, as we say on Mars - 'Face tentacle/ feeler wriggle' (rough translation "bollocks")
Rematch tomorrow night - must remember not to run out of resources quite so early and I had to sacrifice my UFO to take out Ben's Heavy Artillery. With hindsight, there was a better way to do it.
Star Trek Ascendancy is planned for Friday evening - Federation and Cardassians vs. the Borg
 
Latest tayy War of the Worlds - the New Wave - Humans 3, Martians 2. Games are quick and easy to reset so can get in a couple on an evening.
Star Trek Ascendancy didn't go so well - the Borg made contact with the Federation and assimilated one system, I took out a cube but the fleet took major damage and was attacked again before I could bring it back to strength.
The Cardassians hid over the other side of the table and didn't connect to the other systems. I did try to get them linked it so that the Borg might target them but it was too late, the Federation fleet was destroyed and Earth got assimilated - we called it a win for the Borg at that point
 
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