Board Games

I played a three-player game of Founding Fathers the other night. It's from the same people who designed 1960: The Making Of The President (and one of them worked on Twilight Struggle), and is about the formation of the Constitution. It's one of those games that I'm glad I played but glad I played someone else's copy, because I can't ever see it hitting the table much. Which is kind of sad, because it's also one of those games that would benefit immensely from learning the cards.

I don't have time to write a full session report, but it was a tactical brain-burner with three that would only burn stronger and become more chaotic with more players. Normally you only have a hand of three cards, but they can be used for multiple purposes, which lends itself to analysis paralysis. You also have to pay attention to what types of cards other people hold, which sucks because of the similar muddy colors they used for each suit. I'd much rather play a Vassal module of this than play it on a board again.

My main problem with it is that the scoring is tight (the score track only goes up to 30), but some cards allow for huge swings that you can't defend against. For example, there's a card (George Washington) that lets you immediately end the round, and since there are only four rounds this can be a tremendous game-changer, up to and including playing it on the first turn of the game just to be a horrible griefer. There's also a lot of messing with other people, which normally I like but just heaped chaos on an already wild game in my opinion. Although I enjoyed playing it, I was hit by some extremely frustrating cards that dramatically limited my resources relative to those of my opponents, and there was not much I could do about it. The whole time I was wishing I was playing Spartacus so I could do awful things to people and beat the snot out of them in the arena for slighting me, but Founding Fathers unfortunately does not come with an Arena map or gladiators.

Sounds like it needs a Burr-dome.

I've only played Founding Fathers, 1960 and Twilight Struggle once each, and I think I preferred Founding Fathers. It's been a while since I played it, but I don't remember it being that bad of an AP game. I had either four or five players.

The main problem is that each card has a unique special action associated with it, and it is always tempting to use a turn to activate one of those instead of dumping it on a vote or on the debate track. On top of that you have to take into consideration what cards are up for grabs, what everyone else is holding, and what you'll have left to build on after your turn. So those three cards in your hand quickly branch out into a decision tree that is much bigger than any other game I've played with hands this small.

I'm sure it gets much easier after you get a handle on the cards and how they're best used, but in our learning game it was often crippling to be presented with so many choices that all looked equally appealing.

I'm going to suggest that to the designer as an expansion.

It would be great to be able to issue a series of insults that gradually escalate with costs and advantages to the aggressor (or a successful defender), with the risk that he'll be called on his bullshit and have a duel that could end in a ruined career or death(s).

"Demand Satisfaction" would be a sweet game mechanic, e.g. "Spend 3 Chutzpah. Target Politician has -2 Pull until this Event becomes Old News, or until they Challenge the Issuer to a Duel".

A special Boardgamegeek auction: a Boardgamegeek regular, Tim Seitz (out4blood), (in)famous for breaking Martin Wallace's A Few Acres of Snow with his Halifax Hammer (and well known in veteran Age of Empires II circles), passed away suddenly, and a memorial auction is being held on BGG to raise money for his family: http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/150435/tim-seitz-out4blood-memorial-fundraiser-auction/page/1? Not only is it for a good cause, but there are some great deals there, since most of the contributors are offering free shipping.

RIP, Out4Blood. I wish more designers would have taken advantage of his wisdom.

Well-meaning as it is, that auction pains me when I think of all the money that could go to his family but is instead going to shipping companies. Especially when there are international douches lowballing bids because the shipping is "free." Bidders should have to pay shipping.

For any lowballs you might see, I see stuff like $200 for a copy of A Few Acres of Snow, $80 for a copy of Garden Dice and $100 for some CGE expansions that will be readily available in a month.

I love the third one on there. 100 geek gold plus all the tips. And the tips right now total 1199 geek gold. I'm not about to pay any more for GG than I have by donating to the site, but still, that's pretty crazy.

Edit: Holy cats. A subscription to Nevermore Games. I actually enjoyed Chicken Caesar when I played it a few weeks back, but I doubt I'd be in for every game they produce, but still, that's a pretty crazy great thing for them to give up.

True, but that copy of AFAoS is a limited edition signed by Wallace, and the one that Seitz developed his infamous Halifax Hammer on.

The auction is a great idea and I'm sure it will generate a ton of money, it's just that when I see someone bid $15 on a game that will cost $45 to ship to Turkey I cringe.

I'm truly sorry I posted this. It wasn't meant to encourage griping. Of course, Bahimiron, there are going to be inflated prices; consider the intent of the auction. There are also currently games like the E&T card game for $10, DS the card game for $10, Descent 1st Ed for sub $50, $12 Panzer General, and a bunch of other reasonably priced games. They may not be to your tastes, but I wasn't leading any of you astray. I also have seen very few bids from international bidders, and in any case, most of us are offering simply the first $10 for shipping. Jesus. Day trading is three doors down and to the left.

Baker, if you want to make suggestions to the auction organizer (I have!), I'm sure he'd very much appreciate it. I'm pretty sure he did not think out all the variables and permutations.

I think you may have thought I was being sarcastic. I was glad to see those prices and I approve of people getting in on tipping the geek gold auction.

I wasn't griping, either, in case that was directed at me. It's always nice to see the BGG community come together like this.

I've seen a lot of international bids, but the few that are in the lead right now are paying premium prices (which is good, and in the spirit of the auction). It's the lowball international ones that are not in the spirit of the auction that drive me nuts.

I was going to put a game or two up but decided to donate the proceeds from a few recent sales instead.

CSI has Zombicide marked down to $49.99 as their daily deal, which is apparently about $20 under wholesale cost. I am very tempted to get two for free shipping and then sell one for $60 new because I am just that devious.

EDIT: I see that White Dragon Enterprises (a BGG seller who offers free shipping at $100) is selling this for $55 as his regular price, so this isn't as good a deal as I thought.

Man, I just sent that as my BGG Secret Santa gift.

That's what I get for not waiting.

I just finished my first game of Fiasco (after waiting two years to find a group for it), and though I should probably put the writeup in the Tabletop RPG section it has enough board game elements (look at all those dice!) and deserves enough exposure that I'm plunking it down here.

There were six people, including me, so I made the wise-in-hindsight decision to break us into two tables of three, each playing the same playset. For those who have never heard of this game, it's a storytelling RPG that encourages a movie-like narrative, and the theme is established with playsets. We chose Boomtown, which is a Western, but there are all kinds of others, ranging from a John Hughes high school movie to a 50s sci-fi mission to Mercury.

There is a pool of dice (two white and two black per player) that serve various functions. At the beginning of the game they are all rolled, and people select them to establish relationships with other characters, locations, objects, and other details that help form the core of the story. The number on the dice you choose are cross-referenced with a list of things that correspond with the theme, so you don't end up with a bunch of gonzo garbage that would make for a nonsensical tale.

In our game I was a reformed criminal who became a government official that was trying to keep his past secret and was blood brothers with one of the other guys at the table. He was also a reformed criminal with a box of dynamite who wanted to hump my wife and was the son of the third guy at the table. The third guy was a faith healer and snake oil salesman who wanted a bag of gold dust. Somehow a burnt-out cabin in Indian territory and a train out of town were also involved.

The game is divided into two Acts. In Act I, players take turns making up scenes that involve their character, and can decide if they want to control the narrative or if they want the other players to control the narrative. During the scene, a die is picked up from the center pool. If it is white, the scene will end well for that character, and if it is black the scene will end poorly for that character. If you decide to control the narrative on your turn the other players choose how the scene will end, and if you let them control the narrative you decide how the scene will end. Then you take whatever die was chosen and give it to any other player.

When half the dice pool is gone (six scenes with three people), the Tilt is triggered. Each player rolls all the dice they received during Act I and adds up the numbers on the white dice and the numbers on the black dice separately. The lower number is subtracted from the higher number, and the players with the highest black score and the highest white score get to choose two new major twists (selected from a chart) that will send the plot careening towards a fiasco.

Act II plays like Act 1, but with the difference that when you receive or take a die you get to keep it instead of foisting it on someone else. When all the dice in the center are gone the Aftermath is triggered, wrapping up the story. Players once again roll all the dice in front of them, subtracting the lowest score from the highest score, and consult a chart to see how things turned out for their character. A score of zero is The Worst Thing In The Universe, while a score of 13+ is Fan-Fucking-Tastic, and everything in between is shades of gray. As you can see, it behooves you to try to get dice of all one color for your character so you don't need to subtract anything from their final roll. In our game, I managed to get all white dice and roll a 13 at the end, while the snake oil salesman zeroed out. I ended up becoming President of the United States, while he got gangrene that traveled up to his groin as he literally rotted in jail and a series of even more unfortunate events happened to him.

I was really worried that the game was going to be too free-form to easily get a story rolling, but it worked out incredibly well. All the stuff established during setup drips with theme and kicks your imagination into high gear. I was also worried that it would go totally berserk as people introduced progressively wilder crap into the story, but the guys I was playing with did a great job of collaborating to weave a tight narrative that really played out like a Western movie. Considering this was our first time playing I was blown away by the story that came out of three guys just sitting down and puzzling through some random story elements.

We played a very straightforward game where each scene pretty much flowed into the next, but I saw the potential for lots of other storytelling mechanisms. One time when it got around to me my character wasn't in a position to do much of anything, and I knew the guy after me needed me to not be home so he could make a move on my wife, so the whole scene was a flashback where he was puzzling out what the old friend and the snake oil salesman were up to as he walked home.

There's just so much potential here. I'm amazed I had such a satisfactory initial outing even though we could all tell we were barely scratching the surface of this system. Every board gamer who has some creative friends who don't want to commit to a regular RPG absolutely must try this once. I can attest that you only need a group of three to have a great time, and I think it would only drag out and be harder to track with more than that (especially with five--I'm not attempting that until I have a lot more experience).

Finally got in on one of the BGG group orders of custom Arkham dice from Chessex and my shipment arrived yesterday. Fancy dice!

If you're like me and trying to make nice print and play board game like Baker does, this laminator is cheap at Amazon today.

That's the one I use. Great deal on it. I just busted it out the other night to laminate my Fiasco player mats.

I recommend letting it heat up more after the light comes on telling you it's ready. I've noticed that stuff I put through immediately after the ready light glows comes out with a crosshatch of areas that aren't fully adhered to the paper.

Final tip: Keep an eye out for laminator pouch sales at fabric and craft stores. They drop by 50% often. (And while you're there looking like an idiot, you might as well grab some ziplock bags from the jewelry crafting department as well since they are phenomenally useful for sorting bits.)

$17?! Sold! Sweet.

Keep watchin' Amazon. Game of Thrones just hit $12.99. Thirteen bucks for a streamlined strictly two-player version of the game featuring HBO art? Hell, I'd pay six bucks more plus shipping! And I did!

Thanks to Astromarine, Speak With Bread and I played our first game of BSG last night. Fun game!

We didn't do all of the rules right, but hey, who ever does their first time playing a game, right. Some of the rules are just a little confusing, though. Specifically, when you get Cylon ships activating, they either move or fire, I know that much... but when Cylon ships activate because of a card and spawn out of a basestar because of not having any ships on the board, do they also move? Or do they just spawn and stay where they are?

If a Cylon Attack card is pulled from the Crisis deck, and there are already basestars on the board but no raiders, you spawn ships on activation and then again for setup?

Now it's $10.99. It's like a Dutch auction.

Amazon is going nuts discounting Fantasy Flight stuff. Lord of the Rings LCG for under $18. Descent 2nd Edition for $35. Deeper markdowns on X-Wing expansions. Hope this is a new trend.

Talisman is $65! Down from $65.99.

Other than that, there's some really good deals there.

That's the opposite of what I want. I want to see LotR adventure packs with deep discounts and the X-Wing core set available for $18, dammit!

I'd love to see the X-wing core set for $18 too, but they've been out of stock for days.

Thanks to this thread I just bought the LotR core set for $18 and Descent 2nd ed for $35. With my recent X-wing purchase of $35 that brings me to roughly $90 thrown at FFG games this week. And, hell, time and not money is the stickler with me. No idea when I'll get around to actually playing these games.

You should get the Descent 1st Edition Upgrade Kit, too, as it's about $17 bucks now and dramatically expands the possibilities of the base Descent 2nd Edition game. You don't need to own any of the older stuff to use it, and can proxy in monster models from other games or from the Descent 2nd Edition game itself. A steal at that price.

I gotta draw the line somewhere, and the inevitable Steam holiday sale has yet to kick off. :)

But you're *this close* to Descent perfection. You'll pay about as much as you did for the base game if you wait, and you WILL pay at some point.

You will...

The upgrade kit is well worth it.

I blame this board's members for when I file bankruptcy or get divorced.

I hate you. By which I mean my wallet hates you.

I am an FFG mole and it's payday!

Tom Vasel's video mentions FFG included cards for the characters in DungeonQuest 3rd Edition. Did they include cards for characters from any other FFG games besides Descent 1st Edition?

It includes cards for all sorts of characters from FFG's many popular games. Lee Adama, Frodo, Jon Snow, "Ashcan" Pete, Darth Vader, Brother Scipio, Marcus Fenix and, oh, let's say Dracula*.

*Every word of this is a lie.

What Bahimiron said.

Wait, that's not right...

It works with the heroes/minis from Runebound, Runewars, DungeonQuest, Drakon, and Descent 1st Edition (obviously). Some awesome dude even made a spreadsheet: https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=5DE1AF0A49B9CC1B!7581&app=Excel&

What's your backlog look like? I was down to about three or four games that I hadn't played, but then I took a trip to Portland and picked up three more. And there's a bunch I've only played once. In all honesty, my hobby is buying board games, not playing them.