Board Games

[Res Ipsa]

Shades started some threads about boardgames a while back, but I thought I’d start one about recent plays for those inclined to share notes.

I have three friends that I play cooperative, campaign games with. We recently finished Pandemic Season 0, and I can unreservedly say that it was my favorite of the series. Win or lose, every game was both close and tense. Well, except the one game we lost and had to try that month again. The addition of political alignment, NATO, SOVIET, and NEUTRAL added a layer of complexity not present in Seasons 1 and 2. And not knowing how much we could trust our CIA bosses added a new level of intrigue.

If you’ve played Pandemic and enjoy the game and you can get four people together on a regular basis to play a total of 12-24 total games, I’d recommend giving Season 1 a whirl. If you have fun with that, I’d go to Season 0. I think Season 2 was the weakest of the three (especially the ending) and can be easily skipped.

We’re now playing Sleeping Gods, by Ryan Laukat. He’s one of my favorite designers. His other games include Above and Below, Near and Far, and Now and Then. Sleeping Gods is an enormous choose your own adventure cooperative game. You play the crew of a ship on an unknown sea, trying to locate Totems to awaken the Gods and get sent back home. The sheer number of quests is amazing and the combat system is unique and a puzzle to figure out in every combat. Decisions you make have a real impact by affecting your future encounters and choices. It’sa very long game. We’re through the first third after three or four sessions. Score is determined by the number of totems acquired, and the game is highly relatable to try and get a higher score.

Other recent plays:

Nemesis: a semi-coop set in an Alien like universe. You are on a ship that is being evaded by aliens. The players cooperate in fighting aliens, fixing parts of the ship, putting out fires, etc. However, each player has secret objectives that must be fulfilled in order to win. And those could involve killing another member of the crew. And some goals conflict with others, so one never knows who to trust.

I was within a couple of turns of fulfilling my objectives and getting off the ship with an escape pod, when I got impatient, ran down a corridor, and attracted the attention of a man old alien who killed me. (Allowing me to play the aliens — fun!) I was able to make the ship explode, killing two other players. But the captain was able to meet her objectives and sneak off in an escape pod. Turns out she was infected by an alien larva, but the docs were able to remove it. So, one winner! The game is hard, and most commonly, we all lose. I’ve never won but enjoy playing.

Cascadia: This game took the grand prize at Essen this year. It’s a tile-laying game. Each turn, a player takes a combination of a terrain tile and an animal token, playing a tile and the token into his tableau. Scoring includes hexes of contiguous terrain and patterns of animal that match those on randomly chosen scoring cards. For example, in our game, Bison had to be arranged in a hexagon pattern, while bears score for clumps of three. Because each terrain type supports only certain animals, there are lots of different tactical decisions to make in placing tiles and animals.

Guild of Merchant Explorers: There is currently a popular genre of game called “roll and write.” Players roll dice and use them to write on a paper form. In Railroad Ink, it’s Train tracks, villages, and factories. In Cartographers, it’s maps. In Welcome To… it’s neighborhoods. Guild of Merchant Explorers is in the style of a roll and write but without writing or rolling. Instead, cards are flipped and tokens of various kinds are placed on maps. Each player is trying to build an extensive trade route on their map. Turns are simple but the strategy is pretty deep.

I’ll as others as I play. I own too many games that I’ve never played, and I’m trying to reduce that number this year. But the Argentina edition of Great Western Trail sue is tempting…

Also, I have a premium account on Boardgame Arena, which means that I can host people with free accounts for any of the games available at the site. If you want to play something, live or asynchronous, shoot me a DM.

Happy gaming New Year!

[honorentheos]

Sleeping Gods sounds amazing and right up my alley. Wow. Let's just say I went from this post to Red Raven's website to now waiting anxiously to get it.
ETA: They didn't have a copy through their site, so I ordered it off Amazon. I know, Bezos. But...

The idea of playing something online is interesting to me.

[Res Ipsa]

Sleeping Gods sounds amazing and right up my alley. Wow. Let's just say I went from this post to Red Raven's website to now waiting anxiously to get it.
ETA: They didn't have a copy through their site, so I ordered it off Amazon. I know, Bezos. But...

The idea of playing something online is interesting to me.

If you’re interested, take a look at the BGA site and shoot me a DM.