The Board Game Thread - What have you Played recently?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
Not a game that I played, but after 30 odd years I finally put my board game collection out on shelves.
View attachment 54007

Very nice! Reminds me of an old friend who literally filled up an entire closet with board games; they were everywhere, like wherever they would fit. It was chaos trying to get a particular game out of the closet. You have just as many games, but that is nicely organized :-)
 
Very nice! Reminds me of an old friend who literally filled up an entire closet with board games; they were everywhere, like wherever they would fit. It was chaos trying to get a particular game out of the closet. You have just as many games, but that is nicely organized :-)
You just described my office. Everywhere. Everywhere. Tetris is the first game you usually have to play to play a game at my house.
 
Very nice! Reminds me of an old friend who literally filled up an entire closet with board games; they were everywhere, like wherever they would fit. It was chaos trying to get a particular game out of the closet. You have just as many games, but that is nicely organized :-)
When I bought my first house in 2005, they were stored under the house. When I moved into my second house in 2018, they were stored in an attic, with regularly played games in my closet. The heat and moisture in the attic led me to deciding to get them out onto shelves.

I did something similar with my RPGs and graphic novels during lockdown, though on 2 3x4 shelves and 2 bookcases, and it’s been a joy to have them all out properly.
 
I'm falling behind on my 10x10/10x1 because unfortunately the downstairs of my split level, where my game room, flooded during the really horrific downpour on Tuesday night in Athens (local FB groups were filled with people talking about their rooms flooding.

The good news is that it wasn't enough to reach the shelves where the games were, so they are all safe, the bad news is the floor in that room is carpet (uggggh, I've asked the landlord to replace it several times, though they fixed the flooding problem until this downpour). Spent nearly all of wednesday in there with a shop vac myself cause the actual cleaners were so backed up they couldn't get there until thursday, and there was literally a half inch puddle on top of the carpet. Then thursday they cleaned up the rest of it, but all the furniture in the room is still shoved to one side where it was dry, so have no where to play right now.
 
I'm falling behind on my 10x10/10x1 because unfortunately the downstairs of my split level, where my game room, flooded during the really horrific downpour on Tuesday night in Athens (local FB groups were filled with people talking about their rooms flooding.

The good news is that it wasn't enough to reach the shelves where the games were, so they are all safe, the bad news is the floor in that room is carpet (uggggh, I've asked the landlord to replace it several times, though they fixed the flooding problem until this downpour). Spent nearly all of wednesday in there with a shop vac myself cause the actual cleaners were so backed up they couldn't get there until thursday, and there was literally a half inch puddle on top of the carpet. Then thursday they cleaned up the rest of it, but all the furniture in the room is still shoved to one side where it was dry, so have no where to play right now.

That sucks, sorry to hear it. Glad your games were safe though.

Twice I’ve had similar issues. Once in my house now, we had days of rain following a major thaw near the end of winter when the snow melted… just too much water all at once. Water seeped in one corner of my basement (the game room) and one corner of my garage, too. We ripped up the carpet after that and put down tile.

When I was a kid, we had a similar situation. A thaw followed by a storm… but also a power loss. Knocked out the sump pump. Basement flooded with about a foot of water. Lost a lot of games (D&D, Marvel, Price of Freedom, DC Heroes, Star Frontiers, Axis & Allies) and a ton of comics. That was brutal.
 
After looking at this everytime I was in the boardgame cafe I gave in bought this bad boy. Rules don't look as complex as I feared they might be.

View attachment 54204
Cosmic is definitely a "who are you playing it with" kind of game. With a good group that understands that the powers are massively different strengths and so therefore you have to kind of balance the game in negotiations (someone has a good power? You'll probably have to work against them with others more often, etc).

It can also just get REALLY silly for a game that is really a game and not a party game. Really fun game though.
 
Has anyone played Exceed Fighting System?

I've sort of got into Dice Throne and Unmatched lately. Exceed seems along similar lines, except the licensed stuff strikes me as more interesting.

Any opinions? Could I just pick up any one of the Under Night boxes and get started?
 
Has anyone played Exceed Fighting System?

I've sort of got into Dice Throne and Unmatched lately. Exceed seems along similar lines, except the licensed stuff strikes me as more interesting.

Any opinions? Could I just pick up any one of the Under Night boxes and get started?
Exceed is... fine. I prefer BattleCon by the same company for the theme of "2d fighter as a board game". Though it never really got any licensed stuff with it, it is all their IP stuff. BattleCon is REALLY good. I probably would never play Exceed again.

Honestly if you want to try it and you are in the states, I'll mail you the two sets of Exceed I have and you can see if you like it. They are just taking up space on my shelves. They aren't any of the licensed stuff, but you could at least get a feel for the game.
 
Recently introduced a couple of much younger members of the gamer circle to the joys of Cry Havoc. Warmed my heart to see them enjoy a game all the way from 1983.
 
Yesterday we tried out the CMoN version of Project : Elite.
1674917927642.png1674918495160.png
3 players. To learn the game we went the first round with no timer (just doing some shit and figuring out the rules), then a round where each individual player got 2 min, and then the rest of the game as was intended, with 2 minute rushes of frantic rolling, cursing, shooting, rolling 4 Alien Movenments... again! Hilarious hectic chaos! We won, with another round left in the Deck, but we only drew 2 Boss Aliens and about half Non-Events so we were lucky (and the very first Event card was 'All Aliens get a free Move' with nothing spawned yet :smile:).

By the way... I couldn't find it in the rules, but in a 3 player game each player has 8 Action Dice, while in for ex. a 4 player game each player would only get 6? Is that correct?
 
I've started to feel that spending more money on new board games was kind of a waste at the moment, since I am still catching up to a lot that showed up midpandemic, so I've turned to spending money upgrading board games. We've been playing the campaign for Vagrantsong, so I've been making upgraded tokens using cabochons.

20230131_170909.jpg

20230131_170842.jpg

Clicky clicky to see full size images.
 
20230205_141350.jpg

Spider-Ham (PrinceNorton), Ghost Spider (EmpressNorton), and Venom (Me) took on the Sinister Six (with the new Sinister Six addon stuff coming in the new Kickstarter, it made me want to get out the original flavor). Spider-Man must have been on vacation I suppose... we could have used his help.

We lost, but it was SO close. We took out 5 of the 6, but we ran out of time with Mysterio with 1 health left.
 
My thing with Betrayal is that it can be a fun experience, but I don't like it as a game, if that makes sense. Also, a lot of the endings are... just bad or very lopsided.
I think "experience" hits it on the head. It's best approached as that rather than a conventional game. Tales from the Arabian Nights is like that but even moreso. The endings are pretty imbalanced but it matters less if you see them as the end to the experience rather than win conditions.
 
My thing with Betrayal is that it can be a fun experience, but I don't like it as a game, if that makes sense. Also, a lot of the endings are... just bad or very lopsided.
Yeah, I enjoy it, but it's a game where the fun is in finding the story about this week's foolish investigators, and then everyone wins or loses if they had a good time.

(Specifically, my character in Saturday's game went into the haunted house with her buddies and a psychic child, had her torch go out meaning she could only slowly creep through the house, went into a room full of dust which started choking her, realised she was the only character near to the possessed villain, and then collapsed and died trying to leave a room full of junk; the rest of the explorers ended up in a battle royale with the ghost of their dead aunt, who was possessing them to stop them making off with any of their stuff.)
 
Played First Class, one of only 2 expansions I have yet to play. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were an interesting combo, hitting hard but with SW’s reality shaping actually resetting the playing field at random times.876338F7-1511-4843-81D4-19446CF53AB6.jpeg1D6AAA8B-D0A8-464A-B652-604BD5163F9E.jpegF5690A75-9673-451D-8689-E371A6F35EC0.jpeg56F550FE-32F1-47BF-9161-EDC9F1B3D103.jpeg
 
My thing with Betrayal is that it can be a fun experience, but I don't like it as a game, if that makes sense. Also, a lot of the endings are... just bad or very lopsided.
Its definitely best viewed as an experience and not just a game. Then again, the same can be said of most RPGs, so that never been an issue for us when playing Betrayal.
 
Got together with one player from my RPG group and we played two games of Star Realms and one of Cartographers. Both games were her choices.

I knew from prior experience that I've enjoyed Star Realms, did this time as well. I love anything with a space-combat theme, and I also like how the different cards will synergize without getting ridiculously complicated.

I thought I was going to hate Cartographers, but it ended up being pretty fun, too.
 
Darkest Dungeon the board game

Managed to pick up a copy of the core game from a LFGS. The production values are extraordinary. Most of the monsters are great for TTRPGs too.

As someone who found the PC game unrelentingly hard, I find the board game more forgiving, actually.
 
Just dug into my first game of Flying Colors, and it definitely didn't disappoint. If you don't know it, it's one of the most often discussed age of sail tactical hex and chit games. It's fast playing and exciting; figuring out how to move in the wind is a big part of the game; and it's got just the right depth and versimilitude.

I ate $&#! in my first competitive ship to ship duel; we held it on a map that included a lot of complex shoals and used the grounding rules, and I grounded my stern when I got cocky and made a risky turn to try and get a broadside lined up. My opponent carefully tacked upwind until he got on my rake line and proceeded to blow the crap out of my hull. I caught on fire, and then he boarded and captured me. Embarrassing but a lot of fun!
 
Played the Stranger Things game. It’s in the same vein as most co-op game but the design is next level. It has features that allow for strategy, managing risk, team work, mitigating failure etc and it still remains simple to play. Game design is getting very sophisticated, even for entry level games these days.IMG_5660.jpeg
 
1691543352303.png

Strategically it was a chucklefuck on both sides, but we had a great time regardless. The alien players (including me) started imitating various characters from ATHF....


 
Not a game that I played, but after 30 odd years I finally put my board game collection out on shelves.
View attachment 54007
Nice collection! In recent years I have downsized my board game collection from one comparable in size to yours down to about 10 kallax cubes (excluding miniature war game stuff).

I have a feeling your rpg collection dwarfs this.
 
Nice collection! In recent years I have downsized my board game collection from one comparable in size to yours down to about 10 kallax cubes (excluding miniature war game stuff).

I have a feeling your rpg collection dwarfs this.
My RPGs take up a similar space :smile: though that includes graphic novels and various geek books. Probably 6x4 Kallax cubes devoted to RPGs.

Both have been culled and downsized over the last 2-3 years TBH. Probably shrinking by 10-20% overall.
 
This has caught my eye recently. Anyone played it? Seems like a cross between Necromunda and Shadowrun with some interesting mechanics. Will probably bite the bullet and pick it up.
1694036281388.png
 
Mostly I respect your focus. My board game collection is like a shotgun fired at a large game store by an epileptic having a sneezing fit.
I have recently undertaken a couple of years of culling. It was actually a fun process. My wife and I selected 1 game a month that wasn’t getting regular table play and decided whether to keep it or not after 2-3 plays. We managed to get rid of around 15 games that were obscuring other (better) games.

And TBH it’s probably less focussed than my RPG collection :grin:
 
I have recently undertaken a couple of years of culling. It was actually a fun process. My wife and I selected 1 game a month that wasn’t getting regular table play and decided whether to keep it or not after 2-3 plays. We managed to get rid of around 15 games that were obscuring other (better) games.

And TBH it’s probably less focussed than my RPG collection :grin:
My RPG collection looks like the previously mentioned person on meth
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top