Board Games

icarr757_sl said:

Was able to play 2 games of Argent the Consortium this week, 4 person set up, different groups each time. Wow, serious potential for cut-throat worker placement and the game is crunchy as all get out, but very fun. So many parts of the game have dual sides with different functions that replayability and diversity is staggering. Definatly not a light weight game, but if you have a smart game group I highly recommend this game. The anime style art is amazing too, should have gotten the art book.

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Nice coincidence that video for Argent was just released.

I'm a fan of the Watch It Played channel for providing clear instructions on how to play the games rather than reviewing them. Handy to pass on to new people you want to introduce a game to so they have a basic understanding of how to play.

Wife insisted on getting SoB Pt 2 for her birthday and grabbed the Elder Sign expansion for something quick and the XCom game to hit $100 for free shipping - so we'll have another pile of stuff to open Tuesday...

Anyone played X-Com yet? Have not put much effort into researching it. Firefly (and sundry expansions) is the next game I am looking hard at.

icarr757_sl said:

Anyone played X-Com yet? Have not put much effort into researching it. Firefly (and sundry expansions) is the next game I am looking hard at.

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My copy is getting here Tuesday on Xcom - needed something to hit $100 for free shipping, and decided on it. (Argent: the Consortium would've been my choice, but I let the wife choose between the two to make free shipping - Argent is definitely the next though)

[In fact, noticing I literally just said that post before yours... lol - sorry for the repeat guys...]

Still getting a feel for how Argent plays. The guy who won the game last night was wounded off of every non-instant space he placed on starting in round 3... but still cobbled together enough votes off the instant rooms to win. Didn't help that the random board layout managed to produce a No-IP-Spot board, so the Wounding IP was incredibly relevant.

The round-end mechanism really feels constricting at 3 players. Felt like you had way more elbow room to do "cool" things at 4-5 players.

Spent all day yesterday playing board games at the local shop with my girlfriend. Beat Forbidden Island together, I won Kings of Tokyo, lost to Pandemic together, she beat me in Fluxx Wars, and I won Gloom.
I really thought she would like Gloom more than she did. She liked the story-telling aspect of it, but didn't like that she had to pay attention to the points. I, on the other hand, wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much without the points which added a nice strategic element. She liked Fluxx, but I think that was mostly because she got all the good cards and kicked my ass. (Seriously, she had Time Traveler and Time Warp which allowed her to search the deck for any card on every turn.)

Kings of Tokyo...it was fun, but the whole strategy changes with two people. It was much easier to stay inside the city and rack up the extra points knowing only one person could attack me before I got two bonus points. Not sure I liked it enough to get it.

I thought we had more fun with Forbidden Island than Pandemic, but she doesn't see as much replayability with that one as I do. I really like the cooperative games...I already own Legendary. I think I need to force myself not to give advice on moves, though, unless it's asked for.
Anyway...I'll probably pick up both of these games at some point, but what version of Pandemic should I get? They seem to have a few different versions, but I know some expansions/enhancements can actually make a game worse, so I don't want to just go with the newest. Anyone have any recommendations?

We're always trying to find good 2-player games, so feel free to throw something out if you think we'd like it.

Get Pandemic, and get On the Brink as your first expansion. It adds 3 new play modes, 2 of which are fantastic. Boxes should look like this:



Also, if you are getting Pandemic, you should probably get Forbidden Desert instead of Island.

Island is very similar to Pandemic, Desert is less so.

https://boardgames.stackexchange.com...rbidden-desert

Thanks. I think I prefer Island to Desert, but you're probably right that if I'm already getting Pandemic, Forbidden Desert would probably be a better counterpart.

Hateyou_sl said:

Man I wish Vaclav was my neighbor.

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Eh, really into board games? I'm actually not even on the "fast buying" side of the pool when it comes to board games in the cliques down here - all these software engineers are buying $200+ a month and besides months like this where the wife's birthday dovetails extra board game budget at her request usually stick to $100 that sometimes bleeds back into the video/PC game side when there's not enough. Hell, Tony (one of the major organizers - Treasurer for the Makerspace that we use every other week) spent $75 on high quality fantasy coins to replace tokens in the past week or so.

It's just been a nice set of months for boardgaming. And "keeping up with the Jones'" in the board gaming group I've become part of is pretty intense, hah.

Although one strength of my buying is I tend to grab the super new and willing to take the plunge and resell (for whatever reason, being terrible - i.e. MageKnight, outdated in play style - i.e. Arkham Horror) whereas most of the others wait for some kudos to come down for things. Day One video game personality bleeding into board games I guess.

Steven at our group brought "Pandemic: The Cure" the other day which is surprisingly good for a dice game. I've not played the real version of Pandemic yet (can't justify buying something so many own, but no one ever wants to run it!) - but it was surprisingly strategic and amusing for "just a dice game".

Djay_sl said:

We're always trying to find good 2-player games, so feel free to throw something out if you think we'd like it.

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If/When you're able, give Star Realms a try. I got this for myself for my birthday and the wife loves it.

moontayle_sl said:

If/When you're able, give Star Realms a try. I got this for myself for my birthday and the wife loves it.

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Make sure to get the 4 expansion packs with it, well worth the extra 20 bucks or whatever it is.

Boss Monster is a pretty amazing quick game - it feels like it would actually run best with 2 (less ties to worry about) - but only run it with more. Inexpensive too.

Don't own it myself yet though - but the theme is great BTW - basically you're one of the Old NES monsters luring heroes into your dungeon to die - like Dungeon Keeper.

Djay_sl said:

Anyway...I'll probably pick up both of these games at some point, but what version of Pandemic should I get? They seem to have a few different versions, but I know some expansions/enhancements can actually make a game worse, so I don't want to just go with the newest. Anyone have any recommendations?

We're always trying to find good 2-player games, so feel free to throw something out if you think we'd like it.

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It might be worth waiting and picking up Pandemic Legacy, which should be released latter this year. Might be new and interesting enough to get your group involved in it.

Pandemic Legacy | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Vaclav_sl said:

It's just been a nice set of months for boardgaming. And "keeping up with the Jones'" in the board gaming group I've become part of is pretty intense, hah.

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I have the opposite problem with my gaming groups. Everyone already has so many games, and usually pick up new ones so quickly, that there's little point in me doing so most of the time. This is especially true since I'm still relatively new to board gaming, so like to try things out before I buy them, at which point I'll have tried them out on someone's copy that I could just play again with any time!

double post sorry

and triple!
stupid internet

grrr

Any mods around who can delete these?

Quad-----threadbreeeeeaaaaaker.

And yea, we've got plenty of "dabblers" and "moochers" in the group - but there's a handful of us that literally have multiple bookcases filled as well, heh. It's all good. (Also fits in my business that I'm planning for to be seen as a "provider" when it comes to gaming - although in light of the area, I'm revising it and going towards a 2-3 year plan, it'll be awesome if I can get it to happen though - it'll be a cafe with a focus on gaming - bottom floor more of a standard restaurant - upstairs with tables for boardgaming, projection tables for RPGs in sound-dampened rooms, maybe some other options depending how funding works. No actual selling of games though, so should be symbiotic with the actual LGS's and they can keep annoying crap like MTG while I handle the adults [barring maybe special events I'd help them host])

Wife and I literally just played our Tutorial game of XCOM: TBG once the tutorial came off the time limit the game got intense - nothing too complicated mechanically - but the time limit really makes the game, feels like how I've heard Pandemic described but without the deliberate slowness that can come with it.

We're about to take another play without screwing up some fundamentals and keeping special abilities more in mind that we were kind of ignoring. After that we're going to give the new expansion for Elder Sign a shot, from the reviews I've read it sounds to actually turn it into something that legitimately feels like an Arkham style game.

The other folks in my group buy the board games, so I buy the LCG stuff, and keep decks for Netrunner/Game of Thrones/Doomtown/Star Wars together for when they want to play those instead. Works out to be roughly the same monthly cost.

Kinda miss when we started the group, and we got to play the same board games frequently. Now there seems to be a new boardgame out every week, so we only play any given game a handful of times.