2641

Claustrophobia is one of the best hulk-alikes in recent memory. It’s got incredible production values relative to its price, the Asmodee website has plenty of free scenarios (even new printable characters) to keep you busy, and it sets up and takes down quickly. I wrote a summary of the boardgame’s tactical dimensions a while back, and as always the headless hollow player aid is a nice rules summary to have in hand.

I also like Incursion and Earth Reborn, but both are far more cumbersome to play and learn. I never feel like I should have played Space Hulk instead and just done 1v1 right, which is for me the ultimate measure of one of these games; its melee focus and the unpredictability of each side in every turn make it feel like a much different game, especially since most of the scenarios are semi-random.

2642

Just unpacked Nightfall, a deck builder with some similarities to the old CCG Jihad. It’s got some interesting mechanics, including “chaining,” which let’s thou build action chains – but your opponents can also add to the chain, which can create unpredictable sets of events. I hope to give it a whirl this weekend.

2643

I tried this a few weeks back. The chaining mechanic and the emphasis on dealing damage to your opponent make some pretty sizeable changes in feel and play from the other deckbuilding games I’ve tried. It’ll probably take more play to really get a feel for strategy. That said, it also felt like it was light on cards in the base release and not necessarily balanced. Maybe that was just the mix we got, though.

2644

Do tell how this one turns out.

2645

I spent the weekend in a house in West Cork with three friends eating, drinking and playing boardgames.

We played Fresco for the second time. I really like it. Worker placement with strong theme coming through, everything makes sense and the colour buying and mixing aspect is great fun. You don’t think in pure maths with it. Probably my favourite game of the weekend.

We played Ticket To Ride Europe with the Alvin and Dexter expansion (They’re an Alien and Godzilla creature.) I quite like Ticket to Ride, I didn’t particularly like the expansion. Its addition isn’t fun, and can actually annoy. It distracts from the game and there’s little interaction with the running of the game until you get to the end and get bonus points for using them. This decided the game despite me and another person having no need to use them during the game.

Factory Manager was another game we played. Another worker placement game, it’s an off-shoot of Power Grid (which I haven’t played but the others have.) It’s ok, nothing special. You have two stats to increase by placing tiles, the lower of which determines how much cash you get to expand. There’s only five (maybe seven) turns, and one player who went ahead in the second turn didn’t have to do anything for the last two turns but collect cash to win. Because he was ahead we’d need to improve our factories to catch up with him, but that costs cash so we’d have to improve them even more. All in all, it was enjoyable to play. I’d play it again but only if others wanted to, I wouldn’t ask for it. I much prefer Fresco.

The last game I played was Target Earth. One of those there is a Basque guy whose favourite PC game is Enemy Unknown (known to America as X-Com.) Target Earth is a Spanish game that is based on X-Com. You build bases to research your defense ability, create fighter jets and troops, and research alien tech. This is all used to defend against the alien attack in the air and on the ground (seven rounds I think.) Also you have a diplomacy track with some countries allied to aliens, some to you and some neutral. The diplomacy effects your VP and available cash, with the difference in power between your allied countries and the alien countries determining the amount. You can play either a simple or advanced version, simple results in either an alien or human victory, advanced adds individual VP for the best human defender. I thought it was an enjoyable play, but not really because of the game. It was enjoyable because we were four friends who like to talk, strategise, debate and argue. During the game I realised it wouldn’t be great for convention play with strangers because it’s likely one person will dominate the strategy and annoy a “normal” player and quiet players will acqueisce or give up on it. I never played X-Com, but if it’s like the boardgame I can see why it’s ranked so highly, a computer AI would be of huge benefit to the diplomacy and military parts of the game.

It was a good weekend, I missed a day and half of it as I was in hospital and arrived late. The other people also played Race for the Galaxy and Defenders of the Realm. One of them registered on here a few weeks ago and checks the site occassionally so he might post his thoughts on these games or the others he played.

2646

I’ve owned Hex for years now and have yet to find someone willing to play it. Don’t know what it is about that game, but I’ve learned and forgotten the rules twice now, and it sits next to the expansion in my closet untouched. I would love to hear more about it as well.

2647

I love XCom, and Target Earth sounded fascinating at first… but looking at the Board Game Geek entries, it sounds like Target Earth is far too much of a solitaire game that’s pretending to be a multiplayer game. Understandable, given the subject. About the only other way I can see approaching it would be to make it a 2 player game, Earth vs. Aliens.

2648

That’s the impression I got Gus. It was enjoyable because we were arguing over what to do, and that’s fun to us. I doubt it would be fun if you weren’t close friends. And I’m sure one person could optimise the defense better for a perfect game.

There are advanced rules that make the defense more competitive resulting in a single player winner. I’m not too sure how that would work, because concessions will have to be made if you want the group to win in the first place, which is a prerequisite for a single player to win. And that’s just going to end up with one person arguing longer and louder than everyone else, and the rest of the players getting pissed off at him.

I’m not too sure how the 1v1 or even a 2v2 thing would work. You might be able to house rule it where one side’s base builds alien ships? Could work. I doubt I’ll try it, and I wouldn’t recommened buying it to try it. If someone develops and publishes on the Geek I’ll take a look and see what it’s like.

2649

I don’t own a copy, but I’ve played an awful lot of games of the iPhone version. It’s fun, but kind of shallow. It’s difficult to do much planning ahead, and the order in which you draw chits can screw you, i.e. if you draw a lot of “start combat” or movement chits before you’ve drawn any units, you end up being forced to pass repeatedly. Either one side gets lucky and manages to run a bunch of attacks while the board is in their favor, or you end up alternating moves where each new piece negates the last one your opponent played.

2650

Dammit, now I have Fresco on my list as well.

I remember being really excited at the concept but the execution seemed to leave a lot to be desired according to reviews.

I don’t own a copy, but I’ve played an awful lot of games of the iPhone version. It’s fun, but kind of shallow. It’s difficult to do much planning ahead, and the order in which you draw chits can screw you, i.e. if you draw a lot of “start combat” or movement chits before you’ve drawn any units, you end up being forced to pass repeatedly. Either one side gets lucky and manages to run a bunch of attacks while the board is in their favor, or you end up alternating moves where each new piece negates the last one your opponent played.

Yeah it seems like a lot of people have the “getting screwed” experience before I get to them, and never want to deal with it again. Thanks for the comments.

2651

Tracy (and anyone else interested):

I made a thread over on BGG for the Battle Lore thing I was talking about last week. Here’s the link.

The gist of it is that I’m around 90% done with it. The last two sections (comprehensive creature/unit/specialist card references) are there, but need a little prettying up, as well as going through various FAQs and whatnot to clean up some language. And whatever other suggestions people make- I’m still open to that sort of thing.

2652

I like Neuroshima Hex. I picked it up last year on a lark, after haring good things about it, and my friends and I got a bunch of games in before the next new shiny came along. I didn’t like it enough to run out and get any of the expansions or anything, but we found it pretty fun. Then again, it is a very roll-with-the-chaos, sort of thing, and I think it is best with 2 players. 3 is ok, but 4 is just too chaotic- a battle pops off damn near every turn, and gives no time for anyone to set anything up.

I’ve played enough games of it (15? perhaps?) to see that yeah, a player can get screwed by a bad initial draw, but in general, I think the asymmetrical sides are actually pretty well balanced against each other. If someone seems to surge ahead early, that just means they’re more likely to hit a bad patch just when they get their momentum going. I guess I don’t find it much more random and chaotic than Knizia’s Samurai and certainly less than other euro-tile laying things like Carcassone. YMMV, of course.

2653

This is generally true if you don’t get screwed by getting a lot of support tiles before you more than a few unit tiles, or (sometimes) any unit tiles at all. It’s not so much one player taking damage, it’s the turns where you can’t do anything useful and must discard a tile (or tiles) without improving your position, and you also end up losing the ability to use those tiles later when they’d be helpful.

It’s not that common, but it happens.

2654

I think of Neuroshima Hex as a card game with a board for positioning. There’s random screwage like you’d get by drawing poorly in a card game, but it doesn’t take too long to play so you really aren’t losing out on much the small percentage of the time this happens.

2655

I’ve decided that Haggis is my new favorite two-player card game. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a two- or three-player version of Tichu, which is my favorite four-player card game. The goal in both is to get rid of your cards first by taking tricks, and leaving your opponent with as many cards in his hand as possible.

Tichu is tricky to learn, and is fraught with problems because it’s a partnership game so you can get stuck with a n00b who will constantly screw you over. If you can get four people together for it who know what they’re doing you’re all set for a great night of cards, but it’s much easier to find a wily opponent for Haggis, and the game is also much easier to grok. In two-player Haggis each player starts with three wild cards (a Jack, Queen, and King) and a hand of fourteen other cards, with eight remaining cards left out of the round. It’s a terrific combination of open information and randomness, as you can see exactly what wild cards you opponent has to screw you over, but never know exactly what they’re holding because of the cards that are out of the game.

Haggis hits you with a huge penalty for each card remaining in your hand if you don’t go out first, so there’s added pressure to get rid of cards instead of sitting there waiting for a big miracle play late in the hand. Unlike most climbing games (Tichu included) the player trailing in points is not penalized each round, but instead always gets the initial lead. This is a great come-from-behind mechanism that elegantly balances the game.

You can easily put together a two-player Haggis deck using a standard deck of cards (the three-player version uses an extra suit), but the cards are so beautiful I’m glad I bought it. Highly recommended and extremely portable.

2656

True, take any game that has a luck element and people are bound to have a bad run of it. I feel that Hex has enough character and varied game play between the disparate factions that (like Knizia’s Samarai) skilled use of what you get can generally overcome a crappy draw. If a player has that happen before they really learn to play, though… I can see why they’d be turned off.

Speaking of getting killed by your partner in tichu - just last night, I called Grand, had the Dragon, Phoenix, Ace and a pair of Kings… and my neophyte partner passed me the Dog. I almost wept.

2657

I hope this prompted you to take Fredo out to the lake. Who gives partners the dog? Jesus.

2658

It makes sense to do that if you call Grand or Tichu, but yeah. Stupidest move ever if your partner has called Grand. That’s the nice thing about Haggis – if your opponent makes a bonehead move only he or she suffers from it.

2659

Sure, that’s true. I’m just wary of it generally since sticking the opponent with the dog is a time honored tradition when we play, right alongside the legendary “passing of two’s around the table”.

2660

Murph posted this on Facebook, it’s going on my Arkham Horror playlist: Roll a D6.