Have you got a handle on ghosts yet? Neither me or my friend have really made them work that well yet. We introduced another friend but he can't seem to get the hang of Smash Up (no idea why). It's kinda weird, there's three of us (me, Dave and Dan). When me and Dave play two player it's pretty even, and no-one really strings victories together, but whenever the three of us play Dave wins the majority of the games. Very strange. Anyway, this week on Tabletop is Star Trek Catan AND Jeryi Ryan is guesting!
No...we can't make Ghosts work at all! It is getting to the point where we maneuver new people to play them , or try not to play them at all. We watched that new episode...Hubby was laughing at how, even though Ryan is (technically) Wil's step-son, he still has Wil's speech pattern and mannerisms when speaking in the one on one interviews. We just picked up "Descent, 2nd ed." and "Smallworld". I'm not sure when we will find time to play them, but they are now mocking us from the games area of the apartment
I didn't do too badly with Ghost Robots last night...but I still lost lol. Looking forward to see what you think of Smallworld!
Ooh, a tabletop thread. Games I would recommend: * Small World -- Great game, easy to get into, lots of replayability, doesn't take too long (maybe 90-120 minutes for a full 5-6 people.) * Last Night on Earth -- The only thing involving zombies that I actually like. * Betrayal at House on the Hill -- This one is weird because the first half of the game always has the same rules, then the second phase (called "The Haunt") begins, and the rules for that are different each time (based on various conditions.) It's an absolutely crazy game if you can get a handful of people to play it, though. * Battlestar Galactica -- This is another great one for a good-sized group (5-6 players.) Even if you aren't into the show, it's a lot of fun. To start off, 1-2 players are secretly Cylons who can undermine the other players without anyone knowing. Your resources are always dwindling, putting you constantly on the edge of annihilation. You have to try to survive and, if you can, identify and execute the Cylons in your midst. Once the Cylons are revealed (they may also reveal themselves), they can take a more active role in trying to destroy the human race. The arguments spawned over who is or isn't a Cylon are great. This game can take a while, though: I've had sessions go past 4 hours. * Dominant Species -- This game looks incredibly complex on the surface, but once you get your head around the phases and actions, it starts to move pretty quickly. This is a highly strategic game where you do need to spend some time planning out your approach. It's a very interesting exercise.
Hubby and I just finished our first attempt at "Smallworld". It was fun...kind of reminded me of "Risk" with fantasy characters. I think it will be a lot of fun when we can play it with more people. I"ll second Robert Maxwell's recommendation for "Last Night on Earth". A group of us have been playing for awhile now. The expansions really enhance the whole experience. We have a fun evening whenever we break this one out. Cheers!
I kind of wondered about that from looking at the box art (Smallworld that is), but I tend to be picky in what I buy.
Has anyone played "Lords of Waterdeep"? Hubby was watching it played on "Tabletop" and he is really keen to get it. He said it has won a whole string of awards as well. So, can someone here who actually played it give ma a review? Cheers!
I haven't played any of the D & D board games. It's been interesting (and cool) that they're re-publishing a lot of 3rd Edition books now though.
Eclipse is a lot of fun. If you like Twilight Imperium, then you'll probably like Eclipse. It runs faster than TI and the players build the map as they play rather than having the hexes placed before hand. Overall a very fun game that has played different every time so far. We've had a guy attack early and dominate. The same guy did it again and got wiped out. We had a guy win silently by turtling up and building monuments. One guy built a fleet of super ships and we all thought we were done for, only to have one of the other players build a smaller fleet very specifically designed to fight the super fleet. Also if you like the TI universe you can check out REX. Which is just a re-skinning of the old Dune board game in the world of TI. Lords of Waterdeep is very fun. Fairly simple and straight forward. Each player has a secret hero which gives them end game bonuses for completing objectives. Gameplay consists of taking turns placing agents on the map. Each location gives something different, whether that be resources (fighters, mages, clerics, rouge), action cards, quests, or even the ability to build buildings. You use the resources to finish quests or build buildings. Some of the quests you finish have lasting bonuses like "Once per turn, every time you gain a fighter, gain one additional fighter." Overall very recommended. Someone mentioned earlier about a racing game. If they're talking about Formula D, it's surprisingly fun. It's a good game for non-board gamers because the concepts of car racing are pretty easy to grasp and they're well integrated into the game. Your primary choices per turn are going to be what gear you're going to be in, which dictates which dice you roll, then what path you take after you roll. If you want to try something new with a largish group of pro board gamers, you can try Space Cadets. A cooperative game where each person mans a different station on a star ship and you go on a mission. The captain gives out orders which are all various mini games the individual stations play. Depending on how well each station does determines how well the mission goes. All of the orders must be discussed, communicated, and completed before an hourglass runs out of sand. So for example the timer will start captain will say "we need to explore these sectors to find crystals. Engineering, I need power to helm and sensors. Helm I need you go get us safely in that sectors. Sensors, I need you to scan that sector before we reach it. Weapons, you'll do nothing. Sheilds, all power to the aft." before time runs out. Then the timer gets started again and each station has to play their mini game. Helm needs to look through various maneuvering cards and put them in order to move the ship. The sensor station is looking at cards with shapes on them and blindly feeling through a bag to try to find the matching shapes. Ect. Then time runs out and all the actions by the crew get played out. If sensors fail then you don't get to see what the next sector looks like. If the helm failed you could be flying into an asteroid field. Overall a fun game that's a bit different from most board games.
My friend went out and bought it after the Tabletop episode and I'll be playing it this Friday so I'll be able to add to Capt. Vulcan's feedback. Just a general thing, I've discovered another board game devoted site called The Dice Tower. It's pretty cool, they do a lot of podcasts which I don't really listen to but I've checked out some of their videos. They did a series this year of Top Ten, for example Top Ten Game Mechanics We Hate, Top Ten Overrated Games, Top Ten Co-op Game etc. After watching them my board game wishlist on Amazon has jumped to almost 100 items! I see that the 2013 version of Pandemic is only £26 on Amazon at the moment so I'm probably going to pick that up this month, may get Forbidden Island as well since it's only £12 on there.
I was trying to decide whether it'd be worth buying the dice for the Star Wars Empire board game, even though I don't really have any plans to buy that at the moment. But the dice look pretty cool by themselves and it would be amusing to use them for other games where you need odd symbols.
The only way I've been able to get ghosts to be usefull is by pairing them with zombies. Use the ghost card discard to dump minions into the discard pile and use the zombies various abilities to play the minions from the discard pile. Doing that keeps you hand size low for the host buffs while giving lots of ammo for the zombie abilities.
I won with Ghosts/Robots once. My friend bought Android Netrunner an we played it for the first time last night. Anyone have any opinions? I think we definitely need a few more games, I felt a bit powerless as the Corporation.
Played three games of it last night. All three of us absolutely love it. First off the box is gorgeous, neat and organised. The game just looks great, and even though there are a lot of pieces it's not hard to keep track of everything. The rules are actually quite simple, and with some strategy games (Game of Thrones) I get drained towards the end, but I didn't feel that way with LOWD. All three of our games were close, the first two games I was winning up until the final scoring, and the last one my two friends tied. The theme is strong, there's a lot of ways to go about ordering what you need to do, but there are only a limited amount of spaces on the board so you have to try and figure out in which order to go to them. It's a really fun game and it doesn't feel as though it takes as long as it does. I especially love the scoring system. The ending is so tense as everyone reveals their lords and how many points they get for their completed quests. If it hadn't been so late last night we would have definitely played a fourth game.
Thank you (both!) for your reviews! That helps a lot. I wasn't quite as taken with the game demo as my husband was, but your reviews make it sound like a lot of fun. I think we'll have to order it. We just picked up "Forbidden Desert" today. I'll let you know how it is. Oh, and thanks for mentioning the Dice Tower, we've checked it out a couple of times and found it quite helpful.
You're welcome. The expansions look really fun as well (and two come in one box!) I was thinking about getting Forbidden Island because it's pretty cheap at the moment but my friend played it and wasn't too enthused about it. Has anyone played the LOTR co-op game?
OK. "Lords of Waterdeep" is my new favourite game! Hubby and I played 3 rounds today, and I have to say I'm hooked. we'll be playing again with friends on Tuesday. I can't wait to see how it goes with 4 people. I liked "Forbidden Island". It is a new game with each random placing of tiles (some of which are more fun than others). It isn't as much fun with only 2, but when 4 of us play it is better. Come to think of it...it may be the friends rather than the game that are a lot of fun! We haven't played "Forbidden Dessert" yet. It has the same mechanics as "Island" with some added features to make it more of a challenge. We'll see...
Glad you liked it! How does it play with 2 player? It's definitely my favourite game of the moment, something about it just clicks. So far we've played 4 games, 3 3 player and 1 4 player. It's very different with 4 player by only having 2 agents to start with. One of my friends has one all the games. I played about half a game of Battlestar Galactica as well, that seemed pretty fun although it was quite drawn out.