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The New Board Game Thread (Newcomer Friendly)

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Keasar

Member
My friend is currently carefully digging through the discard pile after I played the Star Wars-card in Twilight Struggle, it is the 10th and final turn of the game, last russian card (which will be followed by Fidel Castro from US, his last card) and holy shit is this the best board game I have played for a long time next to Twilight Imperium. It is so much tension in the air that you can almost bite it.

We are currently both down on 0 VP, neither of us knows how this will turn out.
 

bloodydrake

Cool Smoke Luke
Guys what are some of the best quick and easy 2 player games? Right now I am looking at Lost Cities and Hive.

BlueMoon City is a fun easy game that works well 2 to 4 player..less players more of a straight race it becomes.
I've enjoyed Ticket to ride Marklen 2player
They both have less interaction with 2 tho.

Dominion is fun two player as well.
 

bloodydrake

Cool Smoke Luke
My friend is currently carefully digging through the discard pile after I played the Star Wars-card in Twilight Struggle, it is the 10th and final turn of the game, last russian card (which will be followed by Fidel Castro from US, his last card) and holy shit is this the best board game I have played for a long time next to Twilight Imperium. It is so much tension in the air that you can almost bite it.

We are currently both down on 0 VP, neither of us knows how this will turn out.

Sounds like a great session! I've only played it twice but Really enjoyed the tension level thru-out the game.
I'd love for them to figure out a variation of this rule system that played well with 4 players tho not sure which setting would work best
 

sinxtanx

Member
My friend is currently carefully digging through the discard pile after I played the Star Wars-card in Twilight Struggle, it is the 10th and final turn of the game, last russian card (which will be followed by Fidel Castro from US, his last card) and holy shit is this the best board game I have played for a long time next to Twilight Imperium. It is so much tension in the air that you can almost bite it.

We are currently both down on 0 VP, neither of us knows how this will turn out.

AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!

I WON TAKE THAT YOU COMMIE SCRUB

DOMINATION OF EUROPE, AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST AT THE LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT YEAH!

I sat on Castro for the ENTIRE FUCKING GAME
 
A Pandemic clone just dropped for iOS devices. It's called Operation Eradicate and it has a couple of changes but they are all cosmetic (missing cities, five roles, pasted on zombie theme). The core gameplay, however, is unchanged. I've only played through the tutorial and it pretty much how I'd expect Pandemic to play on the iPad. It's $2 right now and they say it's 50% "introductory sale". Who knows when the "sale" ends but for two bucks it's not a bad game.
 

GTI Guy

Member
A Pandemic clone just dropped for iOS devices. It's called Operation Eradicate and it has a couple of changes but they are all cosmetic (missing cities, five roles, pasted on zombie theme). The core gameplay, however, is unchanged. I've only played through the tutorial and it pretty much how I'd expect Pandemic to play on the iPad. It's $2 right now and they say it's 50% "introductory sale". Who knows when the "sale" ends but for two bucks it's not a bad game.

Check out what pandemic on ios could have been.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HenryTruong/20120215/9451/To_Clone_Or_Not_To_Clone.php
 

Neverfade

Member
Oh man, i play tested the newest changes made for the game formerly known as BSG Express. It's getting several tweaks to meet its new theme and is now a spinoff of an existing game. I still don't think I can reveal that info, and while its probably not exciting as a BSG theme, I will say its better than the original game by a country mile. Keep your eyes peeled for this one, I think its gonna be hot.
 

Cathcart

Member
Had some friends over yesterday for four player games of Catan and Steam and then a fifth player joined for a pretty long game of Battlestar.

I screwed myself over in Catan by forgetting that I wanted to play a solider card and then losing the largest army to another player who had been tied with me. Man, that was so frustrating. I had to leave the room for a couple of minutes, lolz. I managed to come back and win the game with a lot of card purchases, though. I'm rarely the one to suggest Catan but it's kinda hard to not get sucked into that game once it gets going.

Of course, winning in Catan meant everyone ganged up on me in Steam, buncha jerks. None of us had played it before and even though I came in last I really liked it. I think I screwed myself over with the role selection stuff, I added a new city kinda early on when it probably would have been smarter to grab the first build or extra build and claim some of the starting cubes before they were gone. The guy who won went for the locomotive upgrade in the first turn. That seemed pretty smart because if you're going to pay for an upgrade you may as well make it the cheap one I guess. Anyway, gotta play some more Steam.

We had one new player for Battlestar and I didn't feel like pulling cards out of the decks so we threw him in the deep end and played with both expansions. He plays a lot of games and had watched the show so he picked up on it pretty quickly. Plus he got to win, frakkin' toaster. Our president misread his quorum cards and misplayed a couple of them on an important XO so he ended up not executing the guy he wanted to execute. That really blew up in our faces and probably cost us the game. Oh well, it was a good game. Plus I don't mind when the new guy wins because then that makes them more likely to come back for more :)

Good times.

Steam_1.jpg
 

fenners

Member
Friend had one of his long running, but rare, game days. 1pm until late, I left at 9:30pm-ish as my brain was fried by all that gaming. At its peak, four tables of different games going. Mostly light-ish as he had invited a few fairly "noob" couples.

What I played (pics stolen from the geek!)

The Castles of Burgundy - euro tile placement game, mild economic engine, lots of ways to score victory points. Heavy on tile placement - you have a map of color coded hexes (each with a dice face on it) in front of you. You're trying to fill up that map, while generating VPs etc. There's a mild 'generate goods to ship for vp' element too. Sounds dull, but it works really well. Roll two dice, that controls which hexes you can activate this turn, what pools you can buy from etc. Every time you build something onto a hex, there's a bonus action for that specific type, and that's where the fun of chaining actions begins. I really enjoyed this - my first game, other players knew it well, but it ended up really close.

pic1189535_md.jpg



Quarriors was next as a time filler - four players, weird set of creatures, game went on far longer than it should because of the combination of creatures & rolls. Two of us stormed ahead, but couldn't finish. One player who was on 0 points for most of the game ended up winning.


7 Wonders - as Quarriors had wrapped up, another group of people had arrived. 7 people? 7 Wonders! Two noobs, 5 well experienced players. Awful card distribution ;) I won with 62 points, which is pretty low. It is what it is. I've played it enough now to know what to expect from it.

Ticket To Ride Asia - one of the new couples had never played Ticket To Ride, and Marty & I had wanted to play the new team version, so we split them up & taught them. Loved it. Map is India, lots of long & short routes, with an interesting map structure. The team game works really well - two players per team, each player has to share at least one ticket into a common pool (wooden rack in front of you) & every time you draw two train cards, one has to go to the pool. Trains are split between the team - 27 each. Game over when any player runs out (0/1/2 left) as usual. Great fun, I pushed the pace up & my team mate got lucky with /lots/ of extra train tickets that we could easily finish, so we had about 8 routes complete. As I pushed the pace, the other team couldn't finish their routes in time. Easy win for us ;) I'll likely pick up this expansion.

pic1077574_md.jpg



Kingdom Builder - Taught this to three new players (including the couple from TtR). This is an easy game to play, hard to play /well/, and is hard to explain on the internet. Kind of like "Through The Desert" but with variable powers & scoring mechanics that change each game. Close game that went over well.

pic1159047_md.jpg



Survive! Escape from Atlantis! Perfect game to end the night, for me. This is an old 70s/80s boardgame remade with great production values - chunky wooden sharks, dolphins etc, nice clear iconography & artwork. You're trying to rescue your lil men while an island slowly sinks, all while sharks, whales & sea monsters try to attack. After your turn, you roll a die & get to move the sea creature type based on that roll. Each type wants/can attack different 'states' - swimmers, manned boats, unmanned boats etc. Total "Take that" kind of game where you have to attack the leader but everyone knows it. Light, fun, fluffy. A lot of fun.

pic830480_md.jpg


That's the most gaming I've had this year, sadly. Other games that got played included Dominion, Belfort, Cornerstone (a few times) & Pandemic... Probably more.
 

XShagrath

Member
I've got Castles of Burgundy on the way. I was tired of waiting for CSI to get it in (not even up on their site), and saw that Amazon had a few copies for $32. I'll have it here on Tuesday.

I've only played one of Feld's other games (Macao), and I really enjoyed that one as well.
 
Just finished my 1st game of Flash Point: Fire Rescue. 2 players, used Family Rules to learn the game. It was really good! Plays much simpler than Pandemic (again, Family Rules, haven't touched Advanced rules yet). Turns are much faster. We ended up losing on the final dice roll; had 6 people saved, 1 damage cube left. Next turn the 7th person would have been saved but the building collapsed. Pretty tense when spreading the fire. Seeing all the flames on the board really makes ya nervous.
 

GTI Guy

Member
Just finished my 1st game of Flash Point: Fire Rescue. 2 players, used Family Rules to learn the game. It was really good! Plays much simpler than Pandemic (again, Family Rules, haven't touched Advanced rules yet). Turns are much faster. We ended up losing on the final dice roll; had 6 people saved, 1 damage cube left. Next turn the 7th person would have been saved but the building collapsed. Pretty tense when spreading the fire. Seeing all the flames on the board really makes ya nervous.

I just cracked open the game myself over the weekend. Realized we were playing the game wrong for the first 3 games then won. I thought you had to be standing on the fire to put it out. When we realized it could be done standing next to the fire it ended in a win! Tried experienced version today and it was great. I highly recommend the game especially for playing with your wife. :)
 
I just cracked open the game myself over the weekend. Realized we were playing the game wrong for the first 3 games then won. I thought you had to be standing on the fire to put it out. When we realized it could be done standing next to the fire it ended in a win! Tried experienced version today and it was great. I highly recommend the game especially for playing with your wife. :)

wow, yeah that's a huge handicap! especially since it takes 2 AP to move into fire and 2 to completely extinguish, there goes all 4 of your actions.

Extinguishing fire to smoke doesn't really seem too beneficial. When I actually started to care about fire management, rather than saving people, there were so many flames anyway that smoke would just turn into fire being next to it

was the jump from beginner to advanced rules tough at all? I'm always intimidated by this in every game that does it (glares at Formula D)
 

GTI Guy

Member
wow, yeah that's a huge handicap! especially since it takes 2 AP to move into fire and 2 to completely extinguish, there goes all 4 of your actions.

Extinguishing fire to smoke doesn't really seem too beneficial. When I actually started to care about fire management, rather than saving people, there were so many flames anyway that smoke would just turn into fire being next to it

was the jump from beginner to advanced rules tough at all? I'm always intimidated by this in every game that does it (glares at Formula D)

If you play a few games of beginner then the move to experienced isn't too difficult. There are even multiple levels of difficulty within experienced. If you play rookie experienced it is basically the family level of difficulty with a number of new elements added to the game. Using the special abilities of the firemen is good fun it adds a lot to the game. Good luck!
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
First rough sketch-up of a card for my game is in from the artist. It's a little rough and some of the info is still missing, but I'm super stoked about the look.

card_concept.png


The card is missing the entry speed requirements and the friction (speed loss) from using the card. So, it's a bit empty looking at he moment.

The manual should go up quickly, and the marketing blitz will either begin on Saturday or a week from Saturday.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/120656/roller-coaster-rush
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Will all the cards be language independent?

For the most part, yes.

The employee cards that give powers may be harder to make language independent. But I'm talking to the artist about putting some symbology on them instead.

I'd love to be able to sell this to non-us players on kickstarter. And obviously make licensing it to publishers easier.
 

Xater

Member
For the most part, yes.

The employee cards that give powers may be harder to make language independent. But I'm talking to the artist about putting some symbology on them instead.

I'd love to be able to sell this to non-us players on kickstarter. And obviously make licensing it to publishers easier.

Personally I have no problem with the English but it would make it easier depending on the people I play with.
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Personally I have no problem with the English but it would make it easier depending on the people I play with.

The most you would be looking at for language dependence is 3 cards in each game. And most of them have pretty simple powers that can be explained.

Like isaid, language independence means I can sell the game in europe on kickstarter for maybe a 10 dollar premium, so I don't want to cut out a source of a few hundred potential sales.
 

protonion

Member
Why didn't anyone tell me that Memoir 44 is free on Steam.
I played 4 matches in a row and I'm sold. It depends on luck more than many gamers would like but it is "fun luck".
 
Why didn't anyone tell me that Memoir 44 is free on Steam.
I played 4 matches in a row and I'm sold. It depends on luck more than many gamers would like but it is "fun luck".

The dice system is luck based of course, but does come down to statistical probability. The Command and Color line of games does have some pretty serious strategy to it when you get down to it, even has pretty active tournament scene. Despite the luck factor of dice, its amazing how often that game system will replicate the results of the actual historic battles. Love the simple depth it has.
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
The dice system is luck based of course, but does come down to statistical probability. The Command and Color line of games does have some pretty serious strategy to it when you get down to it, even has pretty active tournament scene. Despite the luck factor of dice, its amazing how often that game system will replicate the results of the actual historic battles. Love the simple depth it has.

The card draws in memoir bug me more than the die. I needed to activate my left flank for half of a game once but couldn't.
 

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
Looking awesome stooge. Can't wait to see it when it's complete.

It depends on luck more than many gamers would like but it is "fun luck".
Agreed. I find M44 to be tons of fun. Even people who don't like wargames or even board games can get into M44.
 

besada

Banned
Looks great, stooge. I'm looking forward to being able to play it. What's the age range? I've got a precocious 12 year old girl who loves coasters.
 
So last night, we played the RE card game and had a blast. Are there any other games similar to this? I was reading about Thunderstone and played my fair share of Dominion. I like the idea of having a specific character and going into a mansion/cave/deck to fight monsters and whatnot.
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
So last night, we played the RE card game and had a blast. Are there any other games similar to this? I was reading about Thunderstone and played my fair share of Dominion. I like the idea of having a specific character and going into a mansion/cave/deck to fight monsters and whatnot.

Ascension is the most similar to resident evil.

Thunderstone is another popular game, but I have issues with it. The kingdom dek in that game may not match up to the monster deck and it can become very hard to get through the game.

The last suggestions would be nightfall and quarriors.
 

XShagrath

Member
So last night, we played the RE card game and had a blast. Are there any other games similar to this? I was reading about Thunderstone and played my fair share of Dominion. I like the idea of having a specific character and going into a mansion/cave/deck to fight monsters and whatnot.
I haven't looked into it too much, but Thunderstone Advance might scratch that itch. It comes out next month.
 
I haven't looked into it too much, but Thunderstone Advance might scratch that itch. It comes out next month.

It's not a very "personal" game, in that you don't have a unique character or anything. You just buy cards like Dominion. The big difference is you can level up these guys (basically you just replace them with a more powerful version of the same card). You do go through a "dungeon" deck, but it isn't like a a deck for a specific location or anything like that.

Honestly from what I've read, RE sounds like a pretty unique deckbuilder, but it also sounds like it has a lot of flaws. It's kept me from looking into any of the RE deckbuilders.
 

Mashing

Member
I can't believe I lost a two player game of Tigris and Euphrates when I dominated the entire map (played on the Nile variant map) and the other player didn't even have all his pawns on the board. Learned a vaulable lesson--do not let the other player control a monument for too long. Lost by 2 points.
 

Cathcart

Member
Looks like my latest Coolstuff order should get here Thursday. This is going to be a long week.

1 - 7 Wonders: Leaders Expansion
1 - Cyclades: Hades Expansion
1 - Dixit 2
1 - Catan: The Seafarers of Catan
1 - Thurn and Taxis

In the meantime, I've got two friends stopping over for War of the Ring tonight. Just in time for the blu ray collection of the movies to arrive from Amazon.
 
My CSI order from early Jan is still sitting there waiting for Vinhos. It includes Dungeon Petz, and Ora Et Labora as well. Me want.

Me also want Nefarious, but no one even has it in their system yet. :\
 

Xater

Member
Oh god what am I doing? I just got Lost Cities, Rivals for Catan, Hive, Citadels with expansion. I am already eyeing the Samurai re-print....
 

bloodydrake

Cool Smoke Luke
LOL I just got shipping notification for big order as well from fungamescafe.. Must be the end of Feb bla's making everyone want to order some new stuff.


1.Battle Cry 150th Anniversary Edition On Sale, .....................Been wanting to pick up a Command and Colors Game and the discount price was too good to ignore..


2.Dungeon Run ,............... Really don't have a good light Dnd game..so this ones mechanics sound great and wanted another lighter game


3.Cyclades ..............reviews look great,something different then the rest of my collection and great production value..love misconfiguration boards for different player amounts

4.Cosmic Encounter ................in the reviews it looks ok...figured its gotta be played to appreciate..taking a chance just cuz everyone says its so fun

5. Tide of Iron: Designer Series Clearance Item.................cheap price for the 18 scenario book for Tide of Iron.. TOI is probably the only WWII wargame I'll ever buy at this point, I really enjoy it, even tho its fiddly its fun... I picked up Battle cry instead of Memoir partially since if I'm gonna play a WWII miniature skirmish game its gonna be TOI.
 

octobot

Member
must be new boardgame order week, i just placed an order the other day taking advantage of CSIs +10% trade credit (30% total) on magic cards that i dont use anymore. eagerly awaiting the following:
Wiz-War
Space Empires 4X
Dungeon Run
Summoner Wars: Master Set
Earth Reborn
 

Xater

Member
So I already played Lost Cities and Rivals for Catan.

I really love Lost Cities! It is so simple and yet there is some good strategy to it. You can also play multiple games in a very short timeframe. One game probably takes 10 minutes after the initial rund where you explain the rules. Very high recommendation from me if you are looking for a two player game.

Rivals for Catan is a bit more complex but really fun. I am not a big Settlers guy and I think I actually enjoy this "variant" more. The mechanic how you get ressources is fun and there is also tactic to it which buildings you build in order to use their bonuses. I am not sure why it has such a low ranking on BGG. Well maybe some people don't enjoy that it is a bit on the longer side for a 2 player game, it can take around 60 minutes.
 
^Lost Cities is good. I still can't believe how some of these really simple games provoke deep thought and strategy, Hey That's my Fish included. I catch myself thinking hard and strategizing a little too much for what the games are. I have to remind myself, "Dude, it's just Hey That's my Fish, not that serious." Lost Cities less so but I still feel the same way.
 

bloodydrake

Cool Smoke Luke
for a simple game I enjoy Lost Cities the Boardgame version ..works great when we go camping and it rains and everyones cramped in the dining tent or Trailer .anyone can sit down and play easily.
Manhattan is another fun simple game
 
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