Be Excellent To Each Other

Play.lose.chat.refine.play.lose.chat.refine.play.lose.chat.refine.

i just selected this as my work-xmas gift.. anybody familiar with it?
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid

I think Nervous Pete has played it.

I've played it once. It's great fun and pretty easy to pick up, but very, very tactical. It's the kind of game that you spend the rest of the evening analysing your moves and trying to work out just how that dam other player was able to beat you. Would love to play it again.

I own it.

It's pretty much as you'd expect.

I got some money for my birthday, and I did well in my appraisal today, so I treated myself to Imperial Assault, which will hopefully be turning up tomorrow...

'Grizzled'.

You love your mates. They love you back. You grew up with them, enlisted with them, and now you're cowering in the French trenches with them. Yes, it's the first WW1-themed co-operative game, and it makes 'Pandemic' look like calling in sick with a bout of manflu on a sunny Friday. The decisions you make will help the team effort, but people will get hurt. Badly. At least there's no harm in running away to fight another day, even if it makes peace even more unlikely. And if one of your comrades takes three hits (most likely administered by your careless card playing, for the good of the overall mission), everyone loses.

Seriously, it's hard not to screw someone or the team over. You play a card, and if a certain number of symbols on the spread of cards in play match, the mission is lost. People can opt not to, and withdraw to leave their mates in the fray, but the cards they have in their hand carry over to the next round. If you reluctantly inflict a wound to your mate, the bad stuff might upset their game and the team's chances. I was inflicted with 'pride', and so couldn't retreat until everyone else had (I didn't get a chance to render a comrade mute!).

The aim is to clear the 'peace' deck to unveil the dove and win the war. The more missions you fail, the bigger the 'war' deck becomes, making it increasingly less likely it'll be over by Christmas.

We played for three rounds, and then abandoned it. We had no hope of winning. At least in 'Pandemic' we can blame the modern transportation network for the spread of communicative diseases and in 'Flashpoint' on poor enforcement of fire safety orders when the game beats us and everyone dies horribly. But in this game, well, we were just cannon fodder.

I'm not sure whether we were crap, if it was difficult, or just plain unfair. But that's war for you.

Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game

We played this last weekend. It was great but we played it in teams. I'd love to have a go playing as individuals.

I received the ZOMBIECIDE board game. This appears to be a cooperative zombie killing game. It looks fun.

Ooh, please report back after playing!

Joans has had Marvel Legendary and Ticket to Ride America. I've had loads of little games; Cards and dice, Sussed, Ion and Sushi go. All quick games that I'm hoping to play with Chloe. We've got her Frozen Monopoly and some Shopkins game, I want her to see boardgames as a social thing.

I've had Labyrinth recommended too, so that's gone on my wish list with King of Tokyo.

I got that.

You'll have to bring it over when you come and stay next

Will do!

Christmas board games:
Pandemic legacy. Played one game and already had to rip up a card and write on the board. Stressful!

Codenames: great fun. Amazingly difficult at times but suits a wide range of people.

Machi Koro: lovely little tableau building game where you buy cards to generate income and ultimately become first to unlock your most expensive cards.

Sheriff of nottingham: take turns being sheriff and trying to figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth when they tell you what goods they have put in a bag. Great fun but you need to be in the mood for it.

Lords of Waterdeep: D&D themed action selection game like a lighter Agricola. Not played it yet but got base game plus expansion!

Space Alert: cooperative simultaneous action timed programming game. Choose your actions all at the same time, for all twelve of your actions. Then after the time is up, resolve them all in order simultaneously while threats creep ever closer and see how terribly wrong it all went. Love it!

I've ordered Risk: Star Wars based on Rock Paper Shotgun recommendation. I hope the game doesn't anger my wife too much, because otherwise i will have no one to play with.

We have Machu Lori. It's quite ice and laid back.

Sherrif is good fun.

As the wise people say, buy games the people you play with want to play, not games you want to play.

We've been playing Marvel Legendary. Seems good but we've just had a run through to learn the mechanics.

Having a break for baked Camembert. Nom.

I've picked up two X-Wing miniatures game core packs (1 X-Wing and 2 TIE Fighters each). Should be fun for the cottage. Might pick up the Millennium Falcon and TIE Bomber expansion packs before then too.

The Portal boardgame is really, really good.

I just won a game because, as per the rules, I came up with a ten word (or less) plea as to why I should be allowed to win (rather than Gaywood, who made his own plea) without using the letter "e".

Brilliant!

Probably doesn't belong here, but fans of Solitaire could do much worse than downloading and playing Regency Solitaire.

The Jane Austen-style story of a society marriage is piffle, but it's so well presented it acts as a firm enough device for stringing together a mass of solitaire hands.

Little power-ups spice things up and the whole is an oddly compelling little thing.

It's begging for an iOS/Android conversion.

Finally got around to setting up the X-Wing Miniatures game. First played this at Gill and Jen's and really enjoyed it. I've bought two core packs so I've got two X-Wings and four TIE Fighters, so four player games are possible. You can just do dogfighting or there are some mission cards too.

I'll probably get the TIE Advanced and Millennium Falcon expansions before the cottage.

I spent some time on my lunchbreak the other day looking at this small display in the new New Bodliean of historical patriotic boardgames. I quite fancy a round of 'Suffragetto'.

Tuesday night's Netrunner got off to a superb start with my newly constructed super duper Criminal Runner deck, err, losing on the first turn.

I might enter a Netrunner tournament.

What will you do with the rest of that hour?

Probably use the pass to investigate the new hipster bars in Bradford. So it is in my interests to play poorly. The reason I decided to get a game which MrsA would have no interest in whatsoever is so I can get out the house to the pub once a week and not talk about kids and stuff.

*buys Netrunner*

I would probably win a lot more at NetRunner if I did not showboat into traps.

One for Mali: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/n ... mainframe/

Tempting. I will ask about it at Netrunner Club on Monday.

Played 'Sheriff of Nottingham' last night. One of my bugbears with that game has always been the scoring at the end (I'm yet to download the app). Someone in my group suggested we use the money supply to count up the points, and this worked really well. I still came third out of five though.

Also played 'Istanbul', a deceptively simple resource-buying-and-selling-resources game with a nice twist on the '5 Tribes' dropping people across the board mechanism, and 'Cockroach poker', a quick bluffing game. We didn't have the time to play 'Secret Hitler'.

I love netrunner club. It is beer. Them a train. Then netrunner. And beer. Then maccyDs. Then a train.

Did you smash the sinister megaglobal corporation too?

Yeah. Sort if. Lost my first game as Corp due to 3 agendas bring next to each other. Won when I was a runner as I was super aggressive and then lost as a runner because "nobody would keep the points in an unguarded pile". Oops.

...

Nope.

Stupid phone text.

do card games live here?
I got exploding kittens nsfw edition for valentines day 2 nil to me versus wife. should be more funner with more people too.

I kickstarted it and took it to the cottage. We played it for a while before getting utterly engrossed by the Great Dalmuti.

Come to cottage, play it with Craster.
He loves the nope cards.

I LOVE THE NOPE CARDS

actually the shuffle cards are best.

Had a fun afternoon playing various games with my group yesterday. Initial thoughts on each (links are to Boardgamegeek):

-Skull & Roses. Simple gambling game with agonising decisions. Definitely a good filler with simple rules and a lot of stress for the players. I folded far too often.

-Samuri Spirit. Co-op game. We're all samuaris saving a village from evil ninjas. If you get two wounds you transmogrify to your power animal (I went for the bear, obviously) for extra strength. Great opportunities for co-operation and sharing of powers to those who need them, but despite our best efforts the village was still overrun by the bad people. Oh well.

-Secret Hitler. Variant of the 'Resistance' mechanic with a president choosing a chancellor and the players voting on that combination. If approved, the pres draws three policy cards, discards one, and hands the other two to the chancellor to decide which to enact. Policies are either 'liberal' or 'fascist' - you need 6 liberal ones for freedom to triumph. One player is Hitler but he doesn't know who his fellow fascists are. He can also seize power and win. I didn't fall asleep, but everybody wrongly thought I was Adolph. Must speak up more.

-Spyfall. I like this. Everyone's in the same location with a particular role, expect for the spy. For instance, the location is 'beach' and my role is 'lifeguard'. Each player asks questions and answers in character trying to work out who is the spy. The spy has to work out where everyone is. Rounds are timed to 8 minutes. This could work at Cottage or on the board, with suitable amendments.

-Formula D. Roll-and-move racing game. Change gears for to go faster (ie, use larger dice) but be careful you don't damage your wheels, engine, suspension, or gears as you take damage around the track. Within seven people it was surprisingly fun and tense.

That sounds fun and simple enough to play, plus it sounds as if it will also give the quieter players among us the chance to play if everyone has questions asked of them if we played at the cottage, etc.

A corner haas been turned! Criminally I dragged out two wins, albeit down to the wire. And then lost a third. But! Ended up 2 for 1! Hurrah!

Was quietly pleased to hear the 'Ford's board game café feature on the 18:30 comedy on Radio 4 this evening.

Was due to start 'Pandemic:legacy' this evening with my board game pards but have just dropped out due to sickness. Oh, the irony.

Hadn't won a single game since then. Until last night where I scooped a win using a new (for me) character. I really like my runner game at the moment, even if someone was telling me I was using the wrong cards.

My Corp game isn't great right now, I am struggling to score out agendas and have a hand full of them. I will look into this.

I now own Colt Express. Yay!