Board Games

faille_sl said:

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

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That definitely intrigued me. I'm really the supplier of games for my group of friends, so I doubt any of them have played Pandemic yet. One guy has Smallworld, but everything else we play comes from me and my girlfriend. I should really stop buying new ones since I still have Kaosball sitting in an unopened box after moving, but it's a bit of an addiction now.

I'll look into Boss Monster and Star Realms.

Vaclav...someone recommended Elder Sign to us as a good 2-player game over the weekend. I watched the Tabletop and I wasn't sure how it would hold up with less people. What do you think? Also, do you live in Austin?

Uhm - regular Elder Sign not too much, I think it's kinda too much Yahtzee style randomness with no real "feel" to the game - the new expansion (Gates of Arkham) is supposed to alleviate that and really get the feel right finally - but I unboxed it earlier before running XCOM twice with the wife and am going to play it after we get some food in us as we just noticed it's 8:30 and we've not eaten yet.

It scales fine between 1-8 people though, there's zero scaling problems since the clock will just strike midnight every 4th turn (so solo you'll get 4 of your turns per, duo 2 turns each, 8 two midnight effects per player turn, etc - honestly the most elegant scaling of any game I've seen, one of the few with zero rough spots without kludges like "Players run two characters" that some do) - and honestly it tends to be a little easier IMO with 2 people simply because you have less "spread" in where rewards are landing. But again, Gates of Arkham is probably a must for it at this point - and will be testing it this evening but haven't tested yet.

And nowhere near Austin - right outside of Cape Canaveral in beautiful Merritt Island. Brevard County Florida has amazing value, quite low crime ratings for anything populated, low population per sq mile, etc. Only downside is if you get bummed out by a lack of racial diversity - it is like 92% White or something ridiculous like that. Literally within range of SpaceX/NASA to hear launches and at least see the plume they leave behind.

And on XCOM: TBG after the second play - we were on the cusp of winning, we actually finished the final task - but as far as I can tell with the timing we lost as soon as everything hit panic - everything was going to shit but the wife swung the Final Mission the same turn. Definitely the most stressful game I've ever played - but in a good way - not sure if I'd want a whole cabinet of games like it, but as something that stands alone right now it's amazing and scratches an itch that no other game could.

It's a different feeling than many co-ops entirely because of that time limit that the app imposes. Definitely 4 players suggested though - running multiple roles is just extra stress and more things to juggle in your head.

Ah, ok. Just saw you mention software engineers and board games, so thought I'd take a shot. I almost impulse bought Elder Sign on Monday, so glad I resisted. I went from being on the verge of buying 3 games to walking out with none. It's also the only time I feel like I should buy from a store instead of saving a few bucks by getting everything from Amazon. Usually I don't care much about supporting businesses, but the staff are awesome and they have so many free games and tables to try stuff out on.

Elder Sign with Gates of Arkham really is a reinvention of the game - it really felt like a sprawling adventure now instead of the old version that felt abstract and arbitrary. Did win vs the new Hard old one but we did screw up one rule a number of times before I caught the error from not playing for a while. (We were focusing on successes and failures rather than just failures for about the first half of the game)

Unseen Forces is skippable, but absolutely get Gates of Arkham if you get Elder Sign - perhaps run it in "original mode" without Gates for a time or two to get into the rhythm of the rules but once you are comfortable definitely go Gates.

And on programmers - yea, tons of the ones out here are "telecommuters" - I know of 5 close enough to know their full work situation and of them all only one actually works in the office (Although Steven's is someplace close, when they had a server fire he actually went in). Heck, one actually telecommutes to someplace out in Texas. (some oil refining company)

Meetup is amazing some places - apparently they sucked in Maryland from talking to people since we left - but they've been amazing for getting gamers together here in the Space Coast.

My girlfriend has been talking about Unspeakable Words for the last couple weeks, but they didn't have it at the store on Monday. I just happened to be looking through the games on Kickstarter tonight and stumbled acrossUnspeakable Words Deluxe Edition, so I threw $40 for the game and an oversized custom die.
Still considering whether I want the Ghostbusters game or not. I feel like I'm quickly reaching the point where I'm going to have too many games and none of them will be played enough for the investment.

Djay_sl said:

My girlfriend has been talking about Unspeakable Words for the last couple weeks, but they didn't have it at the store on Monday. I just happened to be looking through the games on Kickstarter tonight and stumbled acrossUnspeakable Words Deluxe Edition, so I threw $40 for the game and an oversized custom die.
Still considering whether I want the Ghostbusters game or not. I feel like I'm quickly reaching the point where I'm going to have too many games and none of them will be played enough for the investment.

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No doubt occasionally you'll buy a stinker you'll take a wash on when you resell it on Ebay/BGG that's part of the hobby unless you're one of the moochers. But not that there's anything wrong with that, everyone ends up paying their way somehow in my experience. (Lots of the "moochers" here supply lots of the food for example - plus bodies to make games better is it's own value as well)

I think it's pretty harsh calling them moochers!
I know around here, in my various groups, there's quite a few people who just like to buy the games and need the extra bodies to actually play them. Even on the small ones I've bought, I want people to play them with so I get to experience them.

My family was totally moochers. Complained every week we didn't have good games. I occasionally bought brand new ones (SETTLERS OF CATAN YESSS) if I really wanted them, but got sick of it. We also hosted them at our house so it pissed me off even more. I ended up cancelling weekly game night.

Gaming store near my work has a "scratch n' dent" wall, everything 50% off. Found Caverna and Hyperboria and could not find anything wrong w/ the boxes. My wallet, however, seems to have developed a hole in the bottom of it...

My group has been playing Maximum Throwdown lately as a filler and people have really taken to it. You literally throw cards at the table. It's a ton of fun, pretty light on the strategy and just kind of mindless fun

I really hope that don't fuck up the Ghostbusters boardgame on KS. People are starting to complain and I'd hate to see the game do poorly, its looking awesome to me and its being compared to Zombicide with ghosts.

Looking for good recommendations for the wife and myself for a good 2-player game that could be expandable to 4-6 if we wanted. Something that is co-op or against eachother is fine. Nothing too long (Firefly is too long).

She's into fantasy in that she loves LOTR stuff, but not as much as most of us. She did DM our pathfinder group though!!!

I'm not sure about deckbuilders. She did try MTG with me but lost interest, but if it was cheap enough I'd be willing to give it a shot.

She wanted to play the other day and all we had that was really 2 player accessible was Upwords

Ticket to Ride is a pretty good 2player game in my experience

Super Dungeon Explore is really good with 2 or 4-6. Any of the Zombicide type co-op games are good with 2 or more. Krosmaster Arena is good with 2 but fails at more. Draco Magi is decent at 2 but doesn't play more. Sentinels of the Multiverse plays well at all numbers of players. A Touch of Evil is pretty solid at 2 and really good at 4.

Noodlemod_sl said:

My family was totally moochers. Complained every week we didn't have good games. I occasionally bought brand new ones (SETTLERS OF CATAN YESSS) if I really wanted them, but got sick of it. We also hosted them at our house so it pissed me off even more. I ended up cancelling weekly game night.

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How does one get bored of Catan? Maybe I will some day, but we play a few games a week and I love it. We also randomize the resources/numbers to keep it interesting rather than use the pre-sets.

It's my favorite board game, but everyone else got sick of it. I didn't understand it. It might be because I kept winning.