5181

Metropolitan Wargamers in Brooklyn recently had an Ogre thread on their board. I bet you could find some enthusiastic participants there.

5182

Excellent, they just announced an expansion to Rune Age that includes two new scenarios, two new factions, and new events for current scenarios.

5183

No Retreat is very good indeed. One of those rare games that feels its just hit the perfect balance of playability vs simplicity.

5184

Just had the best nights gaming I’ve had in a long time. I went for a pizza beforehand. We played a new game that no-one had really played before (Nuclear War (which is a pretty great game for one designed in the 60’s.)) And best of all, I played with adults. Actual adults who took the game seriously in a casual manner, didn’t storm off because some “cooler” people arrived at another table, didn’t sabotage the game because their flatmate did something they didn’t like, didn’t play to lose because their BFF had already been knocked out. Everyone was nice to each other, there was no underhanded, double edged comments, and we weren’t subject to endless monologues about how X game is cooler than the game we’re currently playing and if we had only chosen that one… Doog times all in all. And all because we’ve left our old gaming place, and after a disjointed few years migrated to a new place keeping all the non-dicks.

Nuclear War was pretty a fun light cardgame. Like I said, it was Copyright 1965, so I presume it’s that old in which case I’ve never played such a ~fun~ game of that vintage. It’s like a cross between Roborally and Plague and Pestilence. First few rounds of the game are spent building up your population, the latter two thirds of the game are spent firing nuclear missiles at each other to kill off that population that was built up.

You basically draw cards that are either Missiles/Bombers, Warheads or Special Cards. Special cards are played the second they’re drawn (usually losing you X million people to another player, or vice versa.) In front of you you lay out two cards face down (you select the order,) the first is flipped and another is added to the end of the row, and you wait until your next turn. If a missile is flipped, it stays on the board until the next turn, where if a warhead is flipped the missile is launched carrying the warhead, which will take out X million enemy players. However missiles can only carry a certain weight of warheads. So you have to balance smaller missiles with smaller warheads. That’s quite a simple game, but the fun comes into it when you’re negotiating (i.e. shouting and bargaining) with your opposing players over who should launch their missiles at who.

All in all it’s quite a simpler version of Roborally card ordering but combined with a really good party game, interaction impetus. Because who doesn’t get worked up over wiping out their friend’s population with nuclear arsenal?

5185

We played a lot of Nuclear War, with it’s expansions, in the 80s, along with Naval War (1979).

I recently played, and enjoyed, the card game Core Worlds. It may get stale after several plays but the first time was great. I’m also looking forward to the Rune Age expansion. Great core game that always needed an expansion or 3.

5186

My copy of Mage Knight (2nd ed) just arrived. I’m looking forward to unboxing it and walking through the walkthrough.

5187

Enjoy! Mage Knight is fantastic. (The rules seem a bit complex at first, but it actually plays very smoothly.)

5188

I second the Mage Knight love. So many things come together nicely- a deck-building adventuring game with pretty cool mechanics. Definitely try the tutorial before introducing it to anyone else.

5189

Yeah, go Mage Knight! If I can make one suggestion: never play with more than one new person at the table. In fact, new players should always be playing one or two player games of Mage Knight.

5190

This is absolutely true. It’s a very particular game when it comes to trying to fit all the right pegs in the right holes… (Ice block +2, vs use the Ice Attack bonus +3, vs Normal Attack +2 and Normal Block +3)… just knowing where to use them all and organize appropriately.

Wonderful game

5191

Couple of fun stories.

Had a good run of games last night. Played Vasco Da Gama ( I forgot how great the game is). I was doing really well and then I forget to ship on the last turn. Cursing the gods, I saw my chances at victory disappear and then was able to pull it out of the fire by grabbing an extra action and another player shipping before I had to go, opening a spot for me.

Next I played my first game of Labyrinth. What an amazing game. I’m blown away by all that’s going on in that game. I was close to victory by nuking the US and then was foiled by KSM!

Finally,
I won a charity auction for Arkham Horror and it arrived today. I knew I was getting some extra stuff but it came in a box that fit both my kids!!

What was inside?
Arkham Horror detailed as used, but it looked brand new to me.
Dunwhich unopened
Kingsport unopened
Innsmouth unopened…

But wait, there’s more:
Plano boxes galore.
2 sets of custom dice
8 Custom Gate holders these gold looking half moon things. I’m not doing them justice, but they’re cool.
Litko Cthulhu monster holders (will never use them but still cool)
these stands that hold the investigators
All the investigator miniatures
All Wave 1 Monsters

Boy did I under bid. Now just need to 4 hours to play it.

5192

More like six. Maybe eight. ;-)

5193

I’m so jealous. All the investigator minis? Just wow…

5194

The biggest problem you have with the investigator minis is that soon you want the monster minis. And those things get expensive. I mean, sure, at first you’ll tell yourself “I don’t need those, they’ll be too big on the board and some other stuff,” but give it a month or two. You’ll be looking at that Shoggoth mini thinking “Well, maybe just one monster.” Then your wallet will know the true Arkham Horror.

5195

Dude, you need to snap some photos of this thing!

5196

Well it did come with the wave 1 so now I just need to find a really good deal on wave 2. If someone sees it cheap (yeah right) let me know.

I’ll post something up this weekend.

5197

I played Eclipse today (and in an Ars Magica RPG last night so a good weekend of gaming seeing as it was a long weekend and I’m also including last Thursday’s Small World game.) I went home to look it up on BGG and I was absolutely shocked to see how high it’s ranked? The early phases of the game seem to by entirely directed by what comes up when you explore, so you either concentrate on building up money plus one, or research plus one. After the fourth or fifth turn everyone seemed to be going towards pretty much the same conclusion and a war was imminent which just comes down to dice rolls. I didn’t see any depth in the game at all. It’s nice in a way that there are little small victories, getting a nice roll, a nice system to explore, beating off a few aliens, all fine things for the average game. But BGG ranks it as one of the best games ever and for a game that takes as long as it does (admittedly for three of the fours first play) it offered very little for me.

Also, speaking of BGG, what exactly can you do with it? For the past five years I’ve just been using it as an information source, looking up rankings, reviews and geeklists of games. But it seems there’s a lot of functionality built into it, something I don’t have any real idea of. I just went through a bit and entered my meager collection of games (I think I own about five, while my main gaming buddy owns about 150 and has cycled through about 100 others.) And now I’m rating the games I can remember playing, most of which aren’t getting a terrible rank because I can actually remember things about them. So yeah, what’s the story with BGG, what should I be doing to get the most out of it? Is there a way of “friending” people?

Also, I played Small World last Thursday for the first time. I really should have given it a go earlier (but this new gaming club means we’re getting in a lot of gaming.) I think I managed to shock the other players, who had all played before by beating them and getting 94 victory points. Which I was extremely happy about as I’m usually a mid-league boardgamer.

Edit: And I’ve also decided, if I can get the time off I’m going to Spiel in Essen. :D

5198

I had the exact same first impression as you did. I disliked the game halfway through it, and couldn’t wait for it to end so that I could start the rest of my life. There was barely a single interesting moment for any of the six of us who played.

5199

Wow, different strokes, I guess. I think Eclipse is a pretty good 4x game (this is an area littered with games that either have too much micro-management or just take too darn long). It does probably have too much luck, but I think it’s fun designing your ships to counter your neighbor’s builds and go blow them up. We can blow through a 4-player game in less than 3 hours (which might be long for some people, but TI3 takes 10+ hours).

On the other hand, there was much praise given upthread for Mage Knight, which I hated. The downtime is vicious, the screwage is gratuitous, and the deck-building totally breaks the theme (Hey, I know how to cast fireballs! Only, I don’t know ahead of time what time of day I’m going to be able to cast it).

5200

I’ve come to the conclusion that using BGG rankings as a way to determine whether I’ll like a board game is worthless. I just tried the highly ranked Napoleon’s Triumph and hated it. I already mentioned Cosmic Encounter which was a flop. There’s just no substitute for trying a game before deciding if you like it.