Board Games

Heh, I have a friend who sounds just like you. He and his wife moved recently with the aid of friends and his board game collection was the bitch. Not furniture, not appliances, but that f'n room full of board games, that towering mound of boxes that required trip after trip out the front door.

So, me, my board game collection very much pales in comparison. I've never been much of a board gamer, dodged the Magic craze back in the 90s that sucked most of my friends into its monetary blackhole, and have stuck primariily with PC gaming. Only console I own is a Wii and that's for the kids. Though if I had more time I'd probably collect more PnP RPG rulebooks and end up reading only a small fraction of each.

The Ravenloft board game is going for $28, tempted to buy that but I'm still waiting on the X-wing core set to drop below $30 at some point and I've spent enough $$$ over the last few days. Plus a friend decided to buy it after I pointed out its price, so it'll be available to play during our next game night.

Punching out tokens, bagging components, and reading manuals is a lot like playing them, right?

(oh god I hope it is)

I'm nowhere near that bad (yet), my entire collection would probably fit in one moving box. Definitely two.

Let me get this straight. I have Descent first edition (base only, no expansions) and Descent second edition. Are you saying that I should I get the Upgrade Kit as well?

You taken them out of shrink wrap?!?

The upgrade kit converts all your 1st Edition stuff for use with 2nd Edition. So if you prefer 2nd Edition the kit is awesome.

If you're a BGG patron, don't forget to hit up the supporter badge thumbs giveaway and click every entry. Some lunatic just posted that he's giving away a lot including, but not limited to, Ninjato, Dominion, Lancaster, Rune Age, Alhambra, Settlers of Catan, Star Wars X Wing Miniatures and, oh yeah, Descent 1st ed with over 100 painted miniatures.

I was going to play my first game of Ascending Empires last night (a 4x space game where you flick your ships around a board to explore and exterminate) but when we assembled the puzzle-piece board it was too warped to use. Seems the best fix is to get a plexiglass sheet for it and buy a bunch of washers with rubber feet to put the planets on, but screw that. It's OOP and I'm going to dump it. I feel like a rube for buying a game from a company who did such a shoddy job with one of the game's core components.

So we moved on to Cyclades, which I've tried to get to the table forever. We played with three, and I absolutely hated it. It didn't seem intuitive at all, and when one of the guys wiped out one of my starting islands on his opening move before I even had a chance to take a turn I couldn't believe how highly-rated this is.

Then the fog cleared. I suddenly figured out how important and intertwined everything was. I realized that getting knocked down to one island gave you a monetary advantage if you chose Apollo, made you seem like less of a threat, and gave you a strong position to strike out from and defend. I built a mighty fleet and raised a mighty army. I made an alliance with the other player and lashed out at the one who originally attacked me. I carved out a mighty empire that raked in loads of cash each turn, and prepared for a victory that was guaranteed to happen two turns later. Then the guy I made an alliance with, who had stayed out of combat and slowly built up his cash reserve, built two metropolises in a single turn and instantly won. I hadn't paid attention, and he had piled up a staggering hoarde of money while me and the other dude were squandering ours duking it out.

I was dumbfounded. It was the most glorious loss I've ever experienced.

So two thumbs up for Cyclades. The varying order of the gods coupled with randomly-appearing monsters with their special powers offers up some terrific tactical possibilities, while the building of your empire, prepping for war, and grokking the state of the gods, monsters, and board lend it strategic depth. I was particularly fond of the Pegasus card. Normally to attack you must curry the favor of Ares and then move your armies to other islands via a chain of your own ships. Pegasus gives you the Greek hoplite equavalent of the 101st Airborne, letting you take any number of armies from one of your islands and instantly plop them down on any other island, including that of an enemy. It really keeps you honest when you know that if you leave an island undefended to attack a neighbor that he's only one Pegasus away from claiming the territory you left behind.

So glad I gave this game a chance. I was ready to write it off halfway through and get a game of Spartacus going, but we soldiered on and were rewarded for it.

The best part of that story is that three is the worst number of people to play Cyclades with and you still liked it. You are going to go nuts when you get a five player game to happen. Took me forever to do, I kept mentioning it week after week and people always choose something else. When we finally played everyone was like "Why the hell haven't we been playing this until now?"

Picked up the expansions for Eclipse and Core Worlds yesterday and just started looking over them. We're gonna have to get a few smaller games of Eclipse going because that's what Eclipse is all about but come on, I can't have pieces for 9 player Eclipse and not play it. That's gotta happen next year.

Pegasus is a right bastard. But yeah, this is easily one of my most played "default" games, and the Hades expansion added some nice options that you can tweak in and out for experienced players.

Core Worlds is at $25 from amazon, $22.50 with free shipping from another company.

Tell me I don't need it. PLEASE!

It's my favorite deck builder. It combines the best parts of Ascension and Dominion and then puts them in space.

Core Worlds is arguably the best deck building game ever. I'm ordering the expansion today along with the Romulan expansion for Fleet Captains.

You don't need it!

Of course, you might never find it for less. ;-)

My copy has already shipped.

You all have failed me.

Guys, Core Worlds CANNOT be better than Ascension. It just can't. Ascension has burrowed into my mind like a brain worm and dominates my daily routine. Let's ease off the hyperbole a bit. Please.

CORE WORLDS!

You know you want it...

So what's a good place to buy boardgames? I usually shop at Thoughthammer, but they're out of stock for everything I want. :-/

I really like Miniature Market.

I like CSI. Their prices aren't quite as great as MM and their shipping policy isn't as generous as Funagain, but they usually have good stock, they seem to be decent people and they reward loyalty with an ever increasing discount.

That said, I don't buy from them often.

Edit: I have a question for the Star Wars X-Wing players.

I'm seeing A-Wings and Slave 1s on eBay for crazy prices. Apparently they're awards given at tournaments. Is this a thing, then? That there are ships you can only get for winning tournaments? Or will they eventually be for sale and the benefit is having them early? Cos if it's the first, that kinda kills any interest I had in the game at all.

I love both CSI and MM. I usually go with CSI because I'm up to a 4% discount there.

The X-Wing ships you saw are from Wave 2, which are only available as tourney prizes for now but get a general release in February. Considering the big ships are available for presale at CSI for $20 each, people are paying an obscene premium for temporary bragging rights.

Another good place is www.timewellspentgames.com. They're local, which is really nice, as I can go pick up my games same day, but their prices are amazing for any store, local or not. Maybe not as good as MM, but... no shipping costs!

I agree that Cyclades is much better with four or five people than three. I didn't hear about the Hades expansion. I'll have to look in to that.

Perhaps I should try Core Worlds again. I played it once and didn't like it.

I order from CSI mostly because they tend to have good enough prices and their customer service has been very good.

Before people get too excited: The Descent Upgrade Kit converts only heroes and monsters. It doesn't convert map tiles, quests, item cards, nor anything else from Descent 1. The systems are way too dissimilar.

The kit is still awesome. As mentioned earlier, it's easy to use proxies for figures, effectively adding 25 monsters and 48(!) heroes to the game.

So I just got done playing some games with LK and he pulled out The Road to Canterbury which has interesting medieval artwork and is themed around the Pardoner from the Canterbury Tales - each player plays "sin" cards on pilgrims and then scores points by selling them pardons for said sins. It's a light strategy game, but it seemed to break quite easily during our play - I think I won with over 100 points (2nd and 3rd were both in the 20s and 30s), which seemed a bit peculiar. It all comes down to drawing into some of the randomly ridiculous Relic cards that do special things (most important of which is allowing you to do multiple things in one turn) which in turn makes it easier to kill pilgrims, which in turn gives you an extra turn token (which then makes repeating this process in the future much easier).

It's worst sin is the classic "Rich Gets Richer" design that makes the game easier to win the more you're already winning it. I wouldn't really recommend it if you come across it. If you do get roped into playing it, just focus on abusing relics and make your entire game about getting extra turn tokens - the winning will come as a side effect of that.

I'm playing a bunch of San Juan with my family. Pretty fun game. Successfully scratches my Puerto Rico itch but takes considerably less time. Also playing a lot of TTR Nordic Countries with my wife, which is also really fun. I dunno I usually like heavier stuff but on the holidays its nice to play something that's easy to set up and takes only a modicum of concentration.

I managed to sneak a bag full of games (Netrunner, Death Angel, Dreadball, Elder Sign, and Eminent Domain) into the car before we left for my mom's house, and that's turning out to be a good decision.

After a little hesitation at first because the rulebook is so awful, my wife turned out to love Death Angel. We played until 1AM and it was all superbly tense. I am apparently now expected to go buy all of the expansions.

I'm considering this a victory and hoping to jump to Netrunner or Dreadball next -- Eminent Domain is the fallback we-both-know-we-like-this game.

So yeah, lighter games on the holidays are great.

Sort of board-gamey. Does anyone know of PC board games that have local multiplayer I could play with my family on the HTPC? I'm thinking of Ticket to Ride, but I don't know if that has local multiplayer. Anything else? Preferably with both local multiplayer and single player for after Christmas. (And I don't have an iPad thingy.)

Boo. I get Xwing Minis for Xmas and they're no longer on crazy discounts on amazon.

That's worth a :(

Thanks to that sale I got all of Wave 1 that I want. Now I'm trying to sell enough stuff to put in a big Wave 2 preorder. I really enjoy the system and the second wave opens up all kinds of possibilities. The more I look at that Firespray, the more I want two of them.

CSI is having a nice end of year sale that includes Spartacus for $20. http://www.coolstuffinc.com/page/1191

$19 for Vegas Showdown seems pretty good, too.

The only think I can think of off the top of my head is Carcassone because it doesn't have a hand of cards.
http://www.gamefly.com/Download-Carcassonne/5000043/

So what do people think is the minimum number of extry ships one should get to have a fun, dynamic, relatively changeable experience?

I was thinking a TIE Advanced and another X-Wing. Or does that balance things too far for the X-Wings? Are Y-Wings super fun? I know that when it comes out I'll get the TIE Interceptor, but that's just cos I love TIE Interceptors and I used to play a TIE Interceptor pilot on a Star Wars MUSH shut up DON'T YOU JUDGE ME.

Anyway. I don't want to spend a fortune. But I do want some fun choices. So. Thoughts?

(I looked around on BGG to see what people thought on this, but BGG's motto isn't so much best bang for your buck inasmuch as it is 'excess, excess, excess!'. People honestly suggesting buying three core packs and a half-dozen Y-wings blah blah blah.)

Hey, now. I bought three cores. :)

The first thing you should get is another core. No joke. Lots more ships, and the extra templates and dice are invaluable.

As for expansions, if you don't mind using proxy pilots and upgrades for your existing X-Wings and TIEs, get a TIE Advanced and a Y-Wing. They add a lot of variety to both sides. You can use one of your TIEs to stand in for an extra Advanced if you want to mess with those builds.

In addition to the cores I ended up with 2x TIE, 1x X-Wing, 3x Ys, and 3x Advanced. That'll let me run an 8x TIE swarm and gives the Rebels all sorts of build possibilities.

Good Lord.

Maybe I should just sell this. :P

Board gaming is such an expensive hobby. I'm kind of glad I missed the Target sale on the X Wing core set now!

I just tell myself: 1) This is the least expensive miniatures system going, really. There just aren't a lot of units. 2) There is no need to paint, and the paint jobs are really swank. 3) It's Star Wars. If the system dies these minis can be reused in other stuff and/or easily sold.

Miniatures is an expensive hobby. Board gaming can be reasonable.

Every hobby has a buy in. Fortunately board gaming is one where enough stuff goes out of print that it eventually became self-sustaining for me. I sold a few OOP games and funded my whole X-wing collection with the proceeds.