Board Games

Not looking necessarily for games that good for just two players (though that is a bonus) so 7 Wonders might still be on the table. I was worried that Summoner Wars might not be for her. Perhaps I'll look into Small World and do some more research on this Jaipur. Thanks.

The recommendation for Jaipur is a great one. It's a fantastic card game (aside from fiddling with all the tokens every round). If she likes Gin Rummy the Mystery Rummy series is also great, with Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper being the best for two people. Every couple should also have Lost Cities and/or Battle Line.

If she doesn't like fiddly games like the Settlers Card Game, stay away from Innovation. It's chaotic and has you splaying cards out in all kinds of crazy directions.

Everyone likes Small World (except me), and it's easy to learn.

Other recommendations (these are all games that are incredibly easy to learn but fun to play. I'm focusing on stuff that works great with two people):

Carcassonne: The Castle (the best two-player version of this series)
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Enhanced Edition (cooperative card game that is much simpler than most the others I've played)
Aton (abstract, but engaging)
Cities (multiplayer solitaire, and you can usually snag a copy at Tanga or Amazon for around $10)
Hive (simple abstract game)
Haggis (maybe the best two- or three-player trick-taking game ever)
Triumvirate (simple card game)
Corsair (maybe the best Rummy variant ever, but hard to find last I checked)
Court of the Medici (simple card game)
Traders of Carthage (a card game with board game trappings that works surprisingly well with two)
Alhambra (better with three or four, but works with two and a great alternative to something like vanilla Carcassonne)
The Three Musketeers (a simple asymmetric game with great components)
Yinsh/Zertz/Dvonn (three games from a great series of abstracts)
Octi X (one of my favorite abstracts ever)
Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (a wonderful, wonderful asymmetric Stratego variant. I have the older version and love it. The newer one adds stuff I'm not interested in)
Jambo (a bit more difficult to learn than the other card games listed here, but worth it)
Clans (a simple, colorful abstract that works wonderfully with two and can be taught in about thirty seconds)
10 Days Series (a race to be the first person to complete a trip. There are USA, Europe, Asia, and Africa versions)
London (much more complex than any other game listed here, but most of the rules are on the cards, most people like the theme, and it's a great gateway into the wonderful world of richer two-player fare)

Traditionally this is when I recommend Citadels.

Been a month since one of these. I didn't update from Deancon two weeks ago, though I should have since I'm still riding that sweet Xxcha prediction victory high from Rex. Though we played some Resistance and some BSG Express and some Guillotine and some King of Tokyo and even some Rex, the highlight was that moment in Artemis, when we rushed to save Deep Space 4, took aim at the vile alien destroyers firing on our allies and let fly with our most devastating weapon only to watch the nuclear missile lazily fly out, zip past the enemy vessels, arc around, swing back and blow up DS4. Whoops. "Captain, DS3 has hailed us to let us know that someone blew up DS4!"
Got to play four games I'd never played before at my last reddit get together this past Sunday. Mostly good experiences.

I thought I was getting there on time, but it turned out I was an hour late. This being the Halloween meetup there were plenty of people in costume (including one guy as Hercules and his friend as an eromenos) and people were playing spooky games. By which I mean one table had Mansions of Madness going and another had Arkham Horror going. I sat down and watched some people play Glory to Rome (not all that spooky) until someone asked if I wanted to get in on a game of Epic Spell Wizards Dueling to the Death at Mount Adult Swim Looking Art. The promise was that it was 'kind of like Munchkin, but it ended faster'. Three of us decided to play best two out of three. Needless to say we ended up with each of us winning once and then deciding to call it quits. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything I'd seek out. Ever.

I had beforehand agreed to (finally) play Chaos in the Old World with a couple of guys, but one was busy playing Infiltration in a learning game, so I ended up in a game of Dominion Dark Ages with one of the other guys while we waited. I'm not a fan of Dominion. I'm not sure what it is. I've maligned it with the popular terms. Pasted on theme and all of that. Though ultimately I've only ever played using the base set and I just plain found it dull. So maybe it's just the base set? Cos I actually enjoyed Dark Ages. I didn't love it, but I'd play it again. There was a lot more direct interaction with it, with the Knight cards really fucking things up for everyone. For the most part cards just ended up having more interesting effects. Things that really played with the mechanics more than '+1 card, +2 action' and +1 buy, +1 coin'. I ended up coming in a close second despite having gone into it with no overall strategy or real idea of what I was doing. If I'd really been paying more attention I probably would have worked that sweet Forager/Fortress combo into oblivion like everyone else did.

We finally got around to playing Chaos. We ended up with five people interested, so we played with the Horned Rat expansion. Two people had played it before (and one didn't care for it) and the other three (including me) were playing for our first time. I ended up playing the Horned Rat and had a hell of a lot of fun. There was the occasional rules quibble, and my tactics didn't always pay off, but I really enjoyed it and would love to have a chance to play again. I wish we'd played a four player game for my first since I hear it's the ideal, but I actually kind of liked playing the skaven. For the first couple of turns it was easy for people to block me from getting dial turns because there were only so many places with skaven tokens on the board, but once I started getting good chaos cards I was able to settle in and guarantee myself two or three tokens a round, which yielded me a bonus turn at least once. Unfortunately at the very end of the game one of the other guys who'd never played it before (Nurgle) had pulled far ahead on victory points and he won by getting over 50. I had readied an awesome final move which was guaranteed to win me the game, but then it turned out I'd misunderstood the rules. I had a bunch of guys in one place who would dominate the area, getting me some VPs. Then I had played the Horned Rat chaos card that would let me instantly move any pieces in a dominated territory to another territory as soon as I won it, so I was going to move them all over to another place so that when the corruption counting started I would tip it over and ruin it, thus letting me move all of my guys again (as I had the movement upgrade) to a third zone which I would then ruin, claiming the last ruination card and winning me the game by giving me the 20+ victory points needed to pull ahead on the victory track. Unfortunately I misunderstood how that part of the game worked. I thought that you went from territory to territory figuring dominance and then started over to figure corruption. I didn't realize you figured dominance in a territory, then corruption, then moved to the next territory and did it again. This tragic error in my understanding of the game's timing meant I came in third, right behind Slaanesh at a distant second.

Either way, I still really enjoyed the game and would hop at the chance to play it again. I know a dozen little things I would have done differently. Places where I'd've deployed figures to different areas or where I wouldn't have stood my ground in a fight. Chaos cards I would've been a little more careful with. (The Grey Seer card is great, but I used them all up in the beginning of the game rather than hoarding them to spring ruination on my foes when cultists become rare to any but the skaven! HAHA! LONG LIVE THE HORNED GOD!)

Finally we played a game of Glory to Rome. The guy who owned it (who had been Khorne in the game we played) taught it to myself and the Nurgle player. I liked the ideas behind it, but I feel like we must have done something wrong. I won the game in our third time around the circle by having been the only one to complete a building when I pulled the last Rubble building site. There must've been a rules mistake somewhere in there, cos the game lasted maybe ten minutes. Epic Duel Fuckers on Sorcery Mountain lasted longer than that by a factor of three.
Fun evening overall. Honestly, seriously considering seeing if anyone here would be up to playing some Chaos over VASSAL. I wonder just how much effort it takes to run it, if someone would have to run it from the sidelines or if everyone could just play it.

The Penny Arcade forumites have some pretty cool app for play-by-post CITOW if you're willing to dig around and find out exactly what they're using.

Incidentally, are you sure about the Corruption Phase order stuff? The rules read differently, and there's nothing in the FAQ.

From the rules:

That certainly reads like "do domination on each region, then corruption on each region".

From this rules summary:

Was that Rubble site the last in-town site, or the first site stack to get emptied?

Son of a bitch! I just trusted them! I SHOULD HAVE WON THAT GAME!

First stack to get emptied. That would explain it. Hey! It was a learnin' game and I was the one learnin'!

Yes, that's what I thought. It's usually not more than 45 minutes- 1 hour at the longest, but ten minutes sounded like he'd been playing with crazy person rules. You should see if he tracks his plays on BGG or something and has like 300 games of Speed Rome.

Some more clarifications on what happens in the separate domination and corruption phases are on page 4.

I left it out because I figured LK would offer it up. :)

One I totally forgot is Thurn & Taxis. It's about as complex as Ticket To Ride, but with far more depth once you start exploring the design. Great game.

The ideal party game for a group of good friends is Intrigue.

I just don't play enough games these days to be that up to date, so I'm glad you guys are picking up the slack.

Citadels: I think it's a wonderful 2,4,5 player game and manageable at 3,6 if you use the optional rules for 3 player to mitigate the thief and assassin. I really like how the game changes pace depending on who you play with, despite being relatively simple to teach; generally, I need to play more strategy-intensive games to get that kind of variety and they have a more problematic learning curve.

Glory to Rome: In the new edition, it's probably one of my favorite 4-5 player games that isn't a long-ass theme game like Battlestar or Chaos. I think there's a real elegance to the way you use cards in this game that lends itself to a Eureka moment in new players, and it has so many winning strategies based on what comes up that I'm still being surprised by new players. To date, I have yet to win a single game, because I always think that this time is when I have it figured out and these other guys are nuts.

Beyond that, really give Battlestar Galactica a look. Consistently, it's the game that gets the most traction with our non-gamer and gamer friends alike; it's not hard to play, and it offers what I consider the best balance between traitor mechanics and an overall game arc worth getting invested in. It does play best with 5, and requires some tweaking at 5 and 6 to get it to work.

It's also the ideal game for divorce attorneys who need to manufacture more clients.

I prefer Resistance a lot more than Saboteur. I think I also prefer Bang! over Saboteur even though I'll admit that Bang! is pretty senseless. Maybe that's just a function of the group of people who I tend to play Bang! with.

With BSG (without the Exodus expansion, or crazy two-player variant rules) you are guaranteed to have a Cylon. As far as loser without traitors, I've had this happen in Shadows Over Camelot a few times.

I don't really like Small World too much. The first time I played it it was pretty neat. I bought a copy, and then a few more plays, not too interested.

As far as games without overly complicated mechanics go, I like Pandemic, Carcassonne, and Samurai a lot. The rules are pretty simple, but each game can have lots of complex decisions.

What do you mean "without the Exodus expansion...you are guaranteed to have a Cylon"? Exodus just makes the game substantially better in terms of options, but the fastest route to guaranteed Cylons is house-ruling the sympathizer out (sorry 4 player humans!) and (less popular, but still my preference) ignoring Pegasus' Cylon Leaders.

I agree. Lets ignore Cylon Leaders. Can you describe the situation where you wouldn't have a cylon?

I can't, that's why I was asking. I must have misunderstood what you wrote.

Exodus rules leave a loyalty card not passed out. In a 4 player game you could have the undealt card be the only Cylon.

That is terrible. I guess that's one more good reason why I only play Galactica with five.

Small World seems complicated at first and might also put people no to into fantasy stuff off (my wife), but when that is said, it is actually quite simple, because you only have to concern yourself with the races in play or about to be picked, and once you grasp how it works, it's an easy game to play - I've had great success with introducing it to people who aren't hardcore board gamers.

It plays ok but not great two player, but for that the IOS version is easier and requires no setup.

Ah hah. I misunderstood what you thinking when you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I think we all understand now.
My misinterpretation was that you were stating that it's possible but didn't understand I claimed Exodus was required to make it possible.

There are many reasons why I only play BSG with five people, well... actually three people and two cylons, but the undealt Exodus loyalty card ranks pretty far down on my list of reasons.

I feel no compunction to play Exodus straight by all their rules. I understand what they're trying to get at with the undealt loyalty, but what it boils down to is this:

A) The undealt card is Not A Cylon and the game plays as per usual. This happens most of the time in a 5 player game. The game ends up not being affected hardly at all.
B) The undealt card is a Cylon card. This doesn't affect anything first half, but second half a few cracks appear - the Cylon team is hopelessly outnumbered, and the human team may wind up killing one of their own, resulting in a loss of a Morale and some cards. This generally results in the game playing out worse than usual.

The Exodus loyalty rules are primarily necessary to handle the shitty Personal Goal mechanic that I never play with anyways, so there's that as well.

At this point, I like the personal goals/Final Five cards and as a result the revised loyalty execution system seems appropriate.

TLDR:
Tsuro of the Seas: Great game, definite buy
Star Trek Deck Building Game: The Next Generation : Not

Last night at game night we played the new version of Tsuro. I had never played any version of the game before, so I am not 100% which parts were new, but I know that the original didn't feature sea monsters. I liked it a lot. We ended up playing about 5 rounds, and as more people showed up more people kept being added to the game. Having never played the original, I cant vouch for how it worked without the sea monsters, but I loved the way they worked. The game starts with monsters (sorry, "dragons") being placed on 6 squares of the board. On each turn, after you place your tile, you roll two dice. On a 6, 7, or 8, the monsters activate and you roll a single die to determine how they move. Each monster is different, ie, one might move north on a 1 while another rotates while another moves south. If the monsters run into each other, the one that was run into dies. If they run into the tile your ship is on, you are out of the game, and if they block your next move you are out of the game. If they hit an already placed path tile that is empty, they remove it from the board. So the monsters actually work as sweepers, opening up new places on the board for you to go. Its a fun gamble to try to get around them to the open ocean areas, all the time fearing that they will charge directly into your path. I liked the game a lot, and it's now definitely on my "board games that my non-gamers will play" list.

Then the store owner wanted to try the Star Trek TNG deck building game. He had had a customer order one and picked up an extra copy for himself. I dont think any of us were expecting a lot, because has there been a good Star Trek themed boardgame? (I thought the Knizia designed Star Trek: Expeditions was ok, not great.) And I would say that my mediocre expectations pretty much held up. We didn't end up finishing because the game was just stretching on and on and on, and we ended up with some mission effects which just crippled all the players. I almost think we had to have had some of the rules wrong, because it seemed like there was the possibility of a good game in there somewhere, but with such a huge rulebook and so many different effects, decks, and places cards could go, we were constantly having to double check things and be unsure of outcomes. Maybe if we had someone there who had played the game before it might have gone better. I just don't think high levels of complexity work well with deckbuilding mechanics. The best of these type of games take a really simple game system and overlay lots of card effects. So the rules are right there on the cards. Even a more complex deck builder like A Few Acres of Snow strips a lot of the complexity out of its wargaming portion so that the deckbuilding mechanic doesn't get lost. Star Trek Deck Building Game: The Next Generation is trying too many things. If it were up to me, I would strip the deck building part out of it, and simply make the game about upgrading your ship and exploring the unknown parts of the mission deck. There is no reason I should have to worry about buying photon torpedoes, but I not having them for the next three turns because I get a random assortment of the crew and items my starship should have."

Just played Spartacus with three, using Bahimiron's suggestion of starting at 4 influence and ending at 10. The only thing I don't like about it is that it takes so long. The game doesn't drag in any way (you are always involved, even on other player's turns), but this three-player "short" game clocked in at two and a half hours. That's going to be a hard sell in the future when there are other things like Chaos in the Old World competing with it.

Other than that, I'm stunned. This is a licensed game (from what is arguably a second-tier property) that mashes heavy negotiation, severe backstabbing, blind auctions, and a full-fledged arena combat engine (complete with miniatures and betting) into a single system. It should have been the biggest train wreck in boardgame history, but by God, it works!

Each player gets a house with a few special powers and different starting setups and starting gold amounts to add some asymmetry right out of the gate. The goal is to gain a certain amount of influence before other players do. This is gained through playing cards, discarding cards (from your hand or play area) to activate one of your house's special powers, by hosting gladiator battles, and by winning gladiator battles.

Your house has slave cards that generate one gold each and often have special powers you can use each turn, and gladiator cards that consume one gold each turn and fight in the arena. If you have more slaves than gladiators you gain the difference in gold. If you have more gladiators than slaves you discard gladiators until there is parity. Simple.

Each turn you draw three influence cards that have Schemes, Reactions, or Guards. Schemes have an influence value, and you must have that much influence or more to play them for their effect (this doesn't require you to pay influence, you just have to have that much). The really cool thing is that you can ask other players to add their influence to yours to play a card that exceed your influence, and can bribe them to do it or even lie about the card and make them use their own influence to screw themselves over. Reactions are rare and are used to block schemes or trigger other powerful effects, and can be played pretty much anytime. Guards can block a scheme aimed at your house, but only if you discard them and roll a 4+ on a d6, giving you a 50/50 shot. The neat thing about guards is that they can be played in your play area or played out of your hand. There is a strict hand limit (which rises as you gain influence), so being able to get guards out of your hand but still use them (and show others you have them), or leaving them in your hand to surprise people who think you have no defenses, gives them a lot of flexibility. All of these cards can also be traded for the gold value printed on them if you need some quick cash.

After influence cards are played there's a Market phase where players can trade around money, slaves, gladiators, or cards from their hands. It's awesome and frightening to have that much freedom. When that's all done, cards equal to the number of players are drawn from the market deck face-down, and the first card is then flipped so people can bid on them. It's a blind bid, and if nobody bids or players tie and then don't commit more money the card goes away. The cards you can get here are slaves with special abilities, gladiators with better stats and abilities than the lame ones you start with, and equipment cards (armor, weapons, and special items) that you can attach to your gladiators.

After all the market cards are spoken for a final blind bid is conducted to determine who will host the gladiator match that round. The winner gets an influence point and gets to decide who will fight (the host can invite himself if he wants). Any player that declines an invitation loses one influence point. Any player who accepts can send in one gladiator or one slave to fight for his house.

With the combatants selected, bets are placed. You can bet on a gladiator to win (though you can't bet against yourself), which pays 1:1. You can bet that a gladiator will get injured (pays 2:1), and/or you can bet that a gladiator will be decapitated (pays 2:1). You can only bet up to three coins on any of these outcomes.

Then the gladiators fight. They have three stats (Attack, Defense, and Speed) with numbers representing the number of dice they get to roll when that stat is used. Good gladiators also have special abilities that give them an advantage in the arena, and you can attach one armor, on weapon, and one special item to them (assuming you have any equipment).

Each gladiator is represented by a miniature in an arena made out of hexes. First Speed dice are rolled to determine initiative, and the pips are totaled. The person with the most pips can move/attack or attack/move, and then their opponent gets a chance to do the same thing. They can move a number of hexes equal to the number of speed dice they have. This is important.

If before or after his move a gladiator is next to his opponent, he can make an attack by rolling his attack dice, while the defender rolls his defense dice. These dice are lined up in two rows next to each other from highest to lowest, and the defender takes one hit for each die that is lower than the attack die next to it (the defender wins ties unless a gladiator special ability says otherwise).

For each hit, the defender loses one die from his dice pool. The defender chooses these, but can only remove dice from a pool that has at least two dice remaining. This means eventually a gladiator will get down to 1 Attack, 1 Defense, and 1 Speed. If hits get through after that he yields if he takes one hit, gets injured if he takes two hits, and gets decapitated if he takes three or more hits. If gladiators yield or are injured the host gets to give the ol' thumb-up/thumb-down to decide his ultimate fate, which is just totally awesome.

It isn't always wise to give the thumbs-down because a gladiator that wins a match gets a favor token. This lets his owner gain 2 gold per token if that gladiator is chosen to fight in future battles, and also causes the host to lose an influence if he decides to get rid of that gladiator after a defeat. A gladiator with three favor tokens becomes a champion and can't be killed by the host.

I was amazed by how well these arena battles work despite being quick and simple. Speed is very important, because it gives your gladiator better chances at getting a first strike, and also at hitting an opponent and then moving far enough away that he can't retaliate. Deciding what dice to remove from the pool is agonizing, and this is the kind of game where one bad roll or gladiator mismatch can doom you. On the other hand, the deadliness of combat lets it get over in a hurry in most cases, and the betting and cards let you do wonderful things even if you have seemingly crappy resources. If your opponent sends in a badass you can bet on an injury or decapitation and send one of your slaves up against him. Some cards also give you influence if your guy gets killed. Lots of complicated combos and come-from-behind plans arise from a bunch of incredibly simple mechanisms that all work exceptionally well together.

In our session I shot out to an early lead and then got simply hammered by the other two guys. They burned through all my defenses by targeting me with bad schemes, and then loaned each other influence to lay down some absolutely devastating ones. At one point I had no gladiators and no money and figured the whole thing would devolve into a typical three-player game where the leader gets so bashed that all that's left to do is go through the motions and play kingmaker. Then a few nice cards came my way and I got back into the game and ended up winning. In fact, by the end of the game I had three different ways to get the last influence I needed. It's rare to find a game that will let you catch up and win from a seemingly hopeless position like that, and there was just such a great mix of shrewd trading, shrewd bidding, and luck that got me there.

Apologies for the long post. Intended to just drop in and say I liked the game and go to bed, but my mind is all abuzz with the possibilities that playing the long game with four people will deliver. I can't wait to try this again, and the other two guys felt the same way. It's even cheap. This game is unbelievable. Definitely don't judge this one by its cover.

Yeah. It's an awesome game that is doubly refreshing because you can get it for Settler of Catan prices.

You should pretty much just cut and paste that whole post to BGG, Baker. The game's only got three reviews and it doesn't get nearly enough love.

That sounds like a cool game that's just too long for me to justify. I have a number of solid games already that almost never see the light of day because of the duration. You need a very specific group of people that are devoted enough to set aside that much time to just play a single game.

Lykurgos has bought it so the QT3 boardgame group will be trying it soon. Great review, I'm really looking forward to it now.

I was thinking about that, but a lot of the ones I have that fit into that category mainly don't come out because they're complex enough that everyone has to relearn them each time. One thing Spartacus has going for it is that the mechanisms are so simple you can learn the basic flow in a few minutes and it should be an easy one to pull off the shelf in a month and have everyone back up to speed on in no time.

Another thing it has going for it is that there's effectively no downtime. Some of the more complex games I have that take a long time have people reaching for their phones during other people's turns, but this one kept everyone engaged the whole night. During other people's intrigue turn you have to be ready to defend yourself, spoil their schemes, negotiate deals (especially for lending them your influence), and urge them to target other people instead of you. During the market phase everyone is hawking their wares and making bids. And during the arena battles you can jockey for an invite (or take offers to make one if you are host), sometimes have cards to play, have bets at stake, and can try to influence the host as to whether or not a gladiator gets killed. You can even get side bets going (which we didn't do, but there's nothing in the rules prohibiting it). It's a lot like poker, where you have to pay attention to the other players even if you've folded.

One thing it doesn't have going for it is letting players of different experience levels play on equal footing. Someone coming in cold who doesn't know what to expect from the intrigue deck and who also doesn't know how to fairly evaluate market cards is going to get hammered.

I'm starting to wonder if a better way to play a quick game would be to start at one influence and go to twelve, but double all influence gained and lost during the game. This would keep people from playing good influence cards early without getting support from others, but would ramp things up in a hurry. Probably too much so, but it would be nice to play a game this fun and engaging in half the time. (Maybe doubling the gains but keeping the losses as printed would work better... So many possibilities.)

I lucked into a four-player game of Spartacus last night and it confirmed all my suspicions. It is much better with four, it needs the right group to shine, and people who have played before have an overwhelming advantage over newcomers.

As an aside, I just noticed that two of us cheated at one point during the game, trading Intrigue cards from our hands. Apparently I missed the rule that trading or selling those at any point is apparently off-limits. We could have agreed with one another to play those cards and target each other to achieve the same effects, though, so technically what we did was OK.

We randomly selected Houses, and I got what many consider to be the short straw with Batiatus, who starts with three Gladiators and one Slave, meaning he starts losing money during Upkeep out of the gate (Slaves generate one gold, while Gladiators cost one gold per turn). I decided to offset his disadvantage by aggressively trading for Slaves and aggressively bidding for them in the Market phase. I also put my Gladiators up for sale, but nobody ever bought them, so I used my House ability to exhaust two Gladiators to generate two gold each turn.

I focused a lot more on wheeling and dealing this time around. When I needed support from other Houses to play Intrigue cards I would ask one person if they would support me in attacking another, and if they hesitated or asked for gold I would immediately ask the person I was planning to target if they would lend me their support to attack the person who was hesitating/bribing me. In my first game I never told people what I was planning to play, but this time around I was much more open about my plans, so people would know what was coming if they didn't help me out. It worked incredibly well. Too much so, because they didn't know when to push back.

I also made a concerted effort to host the games each turn, even if it meant I missed out on some great Market cards. The guaranteed Influence point was well worth it, and I was able to make even more deals when handing out invites. I never fought once.

It's amazing how much the stuff that comes out of the Market deck sets the tone for the entire game. In this one the Gladiator who automatically decapitates losers was the first card out, and another player bid heavily for him. Another Gladiator didn't appear in the market for a long, long time, (a ton of weapons appeared, though) so he went on a tear, decapitating a starting Gladiator and a Slave. I played his gladiator to my advantage, charging the owner money to get an invite and then betting on the 2:1 decapitation payout slot (which everyone else did, too, meaning there was a lot more money flowing in this game than in the last one).

I drew a few Intrigue cards that would give Influence to a player with 4+ ready Gladiators, which fit right into my setup. We were playing to 10 influence, so as soon as I got to 7 via hosting I dropped one of the 4+ cards and nobody blocked it. Then I dropped another one and someone at the table said, "we'd better stop him. He's one away from winning." Only one other player had a reaction card that foiled my Scheme, and when he threatened to use it played scared and gave him a pile of gold plus future promises to hang onto it. He did, and I used my House special power to discard three Gladiators for one Influence to win the game in true bastardly fashion. If they had been more experienced they would have shut me down.

I can't wait to play this again with a full table of aggressive people who know the cards and House powers. It will be sublime.

Another Spartacus rule I got wrong in both games is that combatants who win initiative get to decide who goes first. We played it that if you won you had to go first. I like our rule better because Gladiators with high speeds have to eventually expose themselves to attack if they want to attack. Under the rule as written you could force your opponent to move, then dash in and hit them before winning the next initiative roll-off, hitting them again, and moving out of range. By repeatedly doing this you could whittle them down without ever putting yourself in danger, which is cheesy and would take a long time.

Ug. Yeah, you just can't run initiative like that in anything meant to simulate melee. Two guaranteed actions in a row is ripe for abuse.

There's never a guarantee, particularly if two gladiators have the same speed, but even one die difference gives you a pretty good advantage. I still think that lunging in for an attack should give the other guy at least one shot at you before you can disengage. Our misread of the rule allows for that.

It's also important to note that the combat isn't meant to be fair. Rules like this make betting/bribing easier. The arena fights are just a small part of a much larger and more important metagame.

Michael Mindes over at Tasty Minstrel simply never fails to deliver in the drama department. Anyone else get this ridiculous email today?

what the hell are you talking about michael not everything is about goddamn vietnam

TMG's responsible for making some of my favorite games and for writing some of my favorite dumbass emails.

What a peculiar way of apologizing. I'm still not entirely sure how his plan to lock down distribution of his company's games (generally leading to higher prices for his customers) would have revolutionized and improved the board game industry, but it's good to know he's decided to stop tilting at that windmill.

Just thought I'd pointlessly bitch about D-Day Dice winning the Golden Geek for best PnP game. Fuuuuuck you guys! When I saw it and Roboderby Express (now available retail-like as the rethemed Pirate Dice) were up for GG it annoyed me, but I figured that BSG Express would still win since it was actually still a real PnP game. Nope. Goddammit.

Sounds like the Golden Geek is just as rigged as every other gaming award. Sad.

In this case I think rigged is just that no one had played any of the PnP games on offering but they recognized one from its hugely successful Kickstarter campaign so they decided to vote for it.

Coolstuffinc has 10% off everything right now, and Miniaturemarket marked down a ton of stuff and will offer another 8% off of it tomorrow. I got Legendary, the new Quarriors expansion, and Wilderness War for $99 shipped at CSI.