3921

Blood Bowl is probably worth getting. It’s long though, twice we’ve tried to play it but ran out of time. It was still enjoyable both times, so I’m giving it a thumbs up.

I do have a question about it though. With team and staff upgrades, it looks like you could have a fuckton of those out by the end of the game, at least the way we were playing. Is it correct that once you get an upgrade from winning/losing a match, it goes straight into play, stays there for the rest of the game, and some of them exhaust themselves when used but get un-exhausted at the start of the next turn? Because if that’s the case then they have a profound effect on the outcome of matches, and it’s really important to know exactly what the other players have in front of them. Particularly because they stay in effect for such a long time.

3922

You are correct except you can’t use them in the turn you get them. With my terrible memory I suck at games like this because I have a hard time remembering my abilities much less those of the other players :(

3923

Played a few new games today at my gaming club.

First up, Ankh-Morpork. It was remarkably quick on three players. The first playthrough ended in roughly fifteen minutes as we didn’t pay enough attention to what the other players were doing and one player dominated five areas uncontested. The second we played all the way through the deck, which took around 45 minutes, after which I won by default since I held the Commander Vimes card. Overall I’d say it’s a fun game that’s pretty thematic but not intended to be taken too seriously. The random events are extremely random.

The second game we played was Bolide, also with three players, with players controlling two cars each. One of the other players didn’t seem to pick up the basic mechanics of the game and was rather far behind but I and another player had a very tight race despite a few turns where it looked like one of us would pull ahead. It was all decided on the very last corner, as we ended the game after one lap as it didn’t turn out to be very fun for the third player.

If you do get the mechanics though I have to say they’re a very clever way of modelling a racing game. Movement is vector based and the game models inertia by restricting your moves to a 5x5 grid. The catch is that this grid moves ahead of you depending on your moves. If your last move was four moves forward and three to the right, a hard right turn, then the center of the grid (represented by a pin) will be set four moves ahead and three to the right of your car for the next turn. Turn too hard, or move too fast, and the grid will go off the track, restricting your movements or possibly forcing you to hit the brakes or crash. It also works to model acceleration. I’ve played Formula De before which used different-sided dice for gears to move cars around the track and Bolide is remarkably simple and elegant in comparison. Not necessarily faster, people planning their turns is going to create headaches for some. I’m just hoping that the next time I play it all the players will be into it.

3924

Bolide sounds really slick. Damn it, too many boardgames to pick up!

3925

From BGG: The third D&D Boardgame - Legend of Drizzt is onsale @ amazon for $39.99 with free shipping options.

I was going to pass on it until later, but $39.99 is a great price.

3926

I saw some new info on the Summoner Wars iPad release over at BGG. They plan to give the base app away with one free faction of your choice, and then you can buy the remaining 7 factions for $.99 each or all of them for $4.99. That is some friendly pricing right there. I love those guys.

I’ve also had a few chances to play Eminent Domain this past week (three-player and two-player) and really enjoy it. The core concepts are easy to grasp and teach, and although the game goes a bit long for its depth nobody was every bored. A lot of that had to do with the fact that there’s always something to do, even if it’s not your turn. Players can play a card out of their hand during their turn as an action, which only they benefit from, but then they must select a role that any other player can also do if they have the cards in hand to do it. If they don’t have the cards, they draw another card, giving you more to think about before your next turn comes around. It’s nice to have a game with such little downtime, and rare to find a deck building game that provides such control over your hand (you keep cards that you don’t use on your turn for the next round, and cards you buy with research (as opposed to taking from the central stock when choosing a role) go directly into your hand instead of to the discard pile, letting you plan better).

I see a lot of worrying that there’s little replayability because there are so few card types, but I can see getting a lot of plays out of this. Much of your strategy depends on what you draw in your opening hand, and there are plenty of things you can do to keep it interesting. Probably not as good a game as Race for the Galaxy, but definitely easier to learn, teach, and play with people of varying skill levels.

3927

Had a chance to play a few games that a friend picked up at Essen. I don’t believe any are released in the States yet.

Trajan was a ridiculous brain-burner from Stefan Feld, designer of Macao, In the Year of the Dragon, and probably some others I can’t remember. It uses a sort of hybrid of Mancala and an action rondel that was a huge investment of mental energy to work properly, and that’s just how you select your action each turn. Beyond that it was about gaining VP through several different mechanics, including set collection and area control, as well as obtaining the right resources to satisfy demands and thus avoid massive VP hits. It reminded me of Age of Industry, not in any mechanical way, but in that there’s a massive infodump at the beginning because everything is interrelated and thus the learning curve is quite steep. I liked it, but it’s definitely for the hardcore.

Nefarious is a light 6-player card game from Donald X. Vaccarino, designer of Dominion. You assign minions to various tasks to assist you in your goal of building various mad science creations. It played in about half an hour, even though none of us had played before. It’s very simple, and I think enjoyment is dependent on how much the theme appeals to your crowd. Pretty decent as a filler, and probably a good game to play with non-gamers.

Singapore is a medium-weight game from Peer Sylvester, whom I never heard of before. Players place buildings each turn, connect them with roads, and then move their pawn up to three spaces, activating buildings that they land on. Buildings come in legal and illegal varieties, and placing or using illegal buildings has a chance of triggering a police raid. Whoever has the most illegal activity (and supplies of opium) gets raided. The illegal trade is significantly more powerful, so that’s the tradeoff. I liked it pretty well, and it seems like replays would be well-suited to developing coherent strategies (we were pretty much generalizing due to inexperience).

3928

Played 1st game of runewars. It’s awesome but I have to call BS on the 3-4 hour game play. Try 7 and that’s after setting up the game map.

Urban Sprawl rocks but is also long.

3929

Not to derail or anything but I was wondering if anyone was going to the BoardGameGeek con? I searched a bit and didn’t see any mention of it.

3930

For real? Seriously, the longest game of Runewars I’ve played was 4-player, 4-hours. And that was a rules explanation game. Most games end in 2.5 hours. play a few more times and it’ll go faster. Because I have to ask, you weren’t playing the ‘Epic’ game, were you?

3931

We’ve had the same experiences without playing the epic variant, and our group has VERY slow players. The Runewars expansion (Banners of War) should be out “soon” (this month).

3932

Played 3 times, 4 players each time. Never less than 6 hours. Experienced players should apparently expect 1 hour per player in play time from what BBG seems to indicate. All the “first game” reviews clock in at 6-7 hours.

If you’re finishing a 4-player game in 2.5 hours, you’re speed playing.

3933

Look for a middle aged black woman. That will be me.

3934

I’m eyeballin’ Flying Frog’s “Fortune and Glory” and smalltime unknown guy’s “Dominant Species”. Anybody have any experience with either of these and if so, would you recommend them?

3935

Um, Chad Jensen is hardly ‘unknown’, he’s the designer of the very successful Combat Commander series.

Dominant Species is in my top 10 favorite games of all time. But it’s very interactive, and you must pay attention to what’s happening in the game, as well as what’s coming.

3936

Dominant Species is a name-maker even if Jensen had been small-time. It’s a damned good game that has a deeply thematic (if not scientifically coherent) take on using adaptation and environment change as core game mechanics. The only objections I have heard to it are from people that simply can’t handle longer games (typically 2-3 hours) and people who flip the fuck out about game aesthetics that are, well, not attractive. Not ugly like some Amertitrash headliners from last year or blah in the way that many Euros have Brown Medievalish down to a dour ritual, but it just looks like a prototype and commits the cardinal sin of employing comic sans.

But it’s a damned fine game with really strong player interaction and turn-balancing aspects, and I discover a new twist with one of the “teams” every time I play and someone does something different with their special ability, and it does that without a pile of special exceptions or complicated sub-rules.

3937

Whoops, my mistake. I could have sworn I’d read it was from a first timer guy which sort of contributed to the “holy crap, this game is good! who made this?”-ness.

3938

After I saw this I no longer minded Dominant Species aesthetics at all.

3939

Party foul.

3940

That dwarf is about to do some serious work on a dragon’s wrist.