What have you been playing? new games, old games. any thoughts?
My buddy at work has expressed interest in Gaslands. Typical me, I purchased a bunch of stuff for it a couple years ago and let it sit un touched.
pulled it out to re-read the rules and the boys wanted in. Well, they wanted to paint first. So we had all of them paint their own car and glue some machine guns (and spikes…so many toothpicks died that day). I also have a 3d printer now, so finally some terrain that matches.
All the boys painted their own cars, just needing a little help with glue. My youngest (6) painted the batmobile and it’s pretty impressive.
so we had a race. one of the kids had a monster truck to use, so things weren’t “fair” can-wise, but who cares.
Right after this image, the Red Truck rammed the monster truck. which caused a wipeout of the monster truck, who spin forward past the green buggy. Purple Cherokee moves forward and flamethrowers both the bug and the monster truck.
After turning round, Monster Truck runs over the green buggy and crushes it. Batmobile power slides around the corner and zips to victory.
I was the Green Buggy
Broke out Tikal recently with the family. Uncovering temples and discovering treasure. Easy rules but also easy to overthink your turn. Nice comfortable easy-to-learn game for the family.
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FFG’s Star Wars deckbuilding game, and Clank! Star Wars, with its simpler deckbuilding mechanics (similar to Star Realms) is not only a pretty good game but it also worked great as a teaching tool to get my family up to speed on the basics of deckbuilding, so that Clank!'s additional board traversal mechanics were easier for them to figure out.
Star Realms…I have the original game, but stopped following it after it started getting expansions and the whole fantasy realms line.
How different is the Star Wars game than Star Realms?
The basic structure is very similar. You have starter decks of ten cards, a galaxy row of six cards to buy, and a supply of 10 outer rim pilots who are always available. The big differences are:
- Certain cards can only be bought by one player, and the other player has to spend attack damage to kill them instead. For example, Han Solo can be bought by the alliance and added to the alliance player’s deck, or bounty hunted by the empire for a one-time reward.
- Instead of a single life pool, you have a selection of planets to choose from, and whenever one planet is destroyed you can’t do any more damage to the opponent that turn. Each planet has a unique thematic ability: Hoth has a shield generator that blocks the first 2 damage each turn, the Death Star has a superlaser that can be activated for 4 credits to destroy an enemy capital ship (star realms base) instantly.
- The Force. The empire goes first, but the force is with the rebels. Certain cards and bounty hunting rewards affect the force, moving it back and forth on a seven-space track. If the force marker is all the way to your side at the start of your turn, you get 1 extra credit that turn. Certain cards get bonuses if the force is on your side of the track- Vader gets +4 attack, X-wings draw a card, Death Troopers get +2 attack, Luke can instantly destroy an enemy capital ship.
All of these changes make the game significantly more asymmetric than Star Realms in which any player can buy cards of any faction, and the galaxy is utterly deprived of any force to bind its inhabitants together.
Thank you! That’s a very helpful post. With those differences I’ll put it on the list to keep an eye out for
My family has been playing Heat: Pedal to the Metal mostly. Gradually adding in the modules so the base mechanics can really set in: we’re up to the Legends and Basic Garage modules now and having a great time.
I wish this game was more widely available, it seems fun but it’s impossible to find at non-scalper prices.
Had a getaway with my wife so games played ate a bit lower complexity and more social than normal.
Fog Of Love first play was only okay. The game was fun, but the built in tutorial was… extensive. I’ll need to play without it to form a better opinion.
Fort was fun when played both times. I really love the “use it or lose it” mechanism in the game with cards played. It’s really well executed in the game.
Steam Up was on my wife’s must play list because of the beautiful pieces (a buddy has the deluxe version we played). The game is simple (in a good way), and gorgeous.
Anno 1800 is an almost weekly staple. The tech building paths in it work really synergistically whe everyone knows the game well. I love this game, and it plays quick (~90 minutes) at our FLGS because it’s in high circulation right now.
Kings Dilemma was finished up (finally). The legacy metric is really fun on this, but it’s more an “argue around a table with your friends” than a real board game. I loved this one too and can’t wait for Queen’s Dilemma once the it ships from the Kickstarter.
Edit: previously called Steam Up dim sum…
Just played my second game of Viscounts of the West Kingdom, I really love the decision space and the deckbuilding nature compared to the other Garphill games. But I am terrible at it, just means we need to play more! Next week is Terraforming Mars, and I have a biweekly Frosthaven group on Mondays. And I think my Crimson Scales group will finally get back together tomorrow after several weeks of a break. We love campaign games!
My boyfriend and I finally started Frosthaven after spending 8 months on Gloomhaven. Our goal is to finish it before Gloomhaven V2 come out.
I gotta say, we won’t be getting another legacy game for a while.
It’s October, and with Halloween coming up my kids and I are playing Horrified a bunch.
