Board Games

Go over the cylon actions on the cards before the game, specifically reading a couple of them and modeling what that would look like in gameplay terms. The number one new player mistake is freezing up when they get the loyalty card and nervously asking for the rulebook and further screwing up the pivotal moment in the game.

Depending on the patience of the group, it might be worth it to model the routine sabotage process and the deductive process for people along with what a basic skill check looks like and what you are assessing blind.

Make sure people have some frame of reference for distances available on the admiral's destination cards.

It's often a good idea to briefly cover victory and loss conditions for humans at the distance 4 mark.

One easy trick is to make sure everyone has to stare at their loyalty cards and only their loyalty for 20 seconds after they are handed out, before putting them down. That gives everyone time to read their cards so you don't get the two people with all the text stuck on their own reading after everyone else is done.

I like this player aid a lot more than the rulebook. Note it includes rules for the expansions, so you might want to cross those out to avoid confusion when you're looking at them and passing them around.

This probably won't mean that much to you right now, but if you just have the base set and haven't looked at a lot of errata: Investigative Committee (yellow card) when played as a card effect *does not* flip over the destiny deck cards. It just makes all player contributions open information. Otherwise, it is a ridiculously overpowered card in the base game.

But yeah, mostly just gauge the tolerance of your people for rules, maybe just make that first thing I mention a priority and just roll with the punches on the rest. And get five players, it's a superlative game with five.

You say get rid of the sympathizer. Do I drop the card completely or simply replace it with another human (cylon)?

For a 5 person game, you should have 2 cylons and 3 humans.

There are rules variants for four players that get rid of the sympthizer, by rebalancing the game slightly against the humans and cutting the sympathizer or replacing the sympathizer (in Pegasus) with a Cylon leader. I don't really like either of those, but sympathizer is the worst case scenario.
Basically, it's why those of us who play the game a lot will only do 5 players or 6 if everyone knows the rules well and is willing to sacrifice some ease of play in return for getting everyone into it, thus avoiding the sympathizer problem altogether since they don't exist at other player numbers.

My first time ever playing BSG was with 6 people using Cylon Leaders. It almost soured me on the game entirely. I'd love those hours of my life back.

If you have more than 5 players, play ten games of Saboteur.

6 people works best with a Cylon Leader being played by somebody who knows what the hell it is that a Cylon Leader is supposed to do. A variant I've heard of but haven't tried (but probably would try sometimes) is to have the Cylon leader get dealt one victory card from the 4/6 pile and one victory card from the 5 pile at the start and then discards one during Sleeper based on the Sympathizer rules (he discards the 5-backed card if humans are in the red and discards the 4/6 one otherwise). There are a couple of them that have absolutely stupid victory conditions that it would behoove everybody to just remove, but I can't remember which they are off the top of my head.

I'm not saying playing with 6 is great, but it can work much better with some adjustments and if everybody is experienced.

The time I played the CL's goal was something like 'Cylon victory after distance 6'. Which just meant little chance of the humans winning, but at least it was going to take a while.

Saboteur is amazing. I definitely need to pick up a copy of it.

I think I played BSG with 4 people and vowed to never play again. Maybe I should have tried 5.

Yeah, that one's kinda dumb. The CL can realistically just start screwing the human's over pretty early and it's still reasonable that they'll make it to distance 6 before they lose. I've probably played as a Cylon Leader at least half a dozen times and have seen most of the victory cards in action for better or worse - I'll try to post a listing later of the one's that are dumb and boring and should never under any circumstances have a chance of being in your game.

I played a couple of games of Ghost Stories this weekend with my brothers, one game of two players and one of three. We used the official variant rules, so we had neutral boards. It's not a new game and I think people on here are familiar with how it works, so I'll just jot down some impressions.

I think it's brilliant. It's pretty quick and it's fairly easy to lead people through. It's got a great blend of different mechanics and theme and successfully 'rises from the board'. I don't know how my group will react to a pure co-op like this as we haven't played one yet.
It's an absolutely hilarious game if you can see the funny side of it. We've only got a couple of games down but I find myself giggling the worse things get. Maybe that's just me.
It'll fall foul of the usual co-op problems but I think the game's strong enough that a decent group won't have any problems with it, and it gives you ample opportunity for chat.

I also need to work on my shuffling. Second game, blue drew a die-capture ghost. Neutral drew nothing, then green drew a ghost, that drew a ghost, that drew a ghost, that drew a ghost, that drew a die-capture ghost and left us looking at the back of the Wu-Feng card with an overrun board. I couldn't stop laughing. First game we had seven haunters out at one go, pretty evenly distributed. Also amusing.

Glazedcoast!

After reading about it here and elsewhere, I picked up Marvel's Legendary Deck Building Game. I'm not a fan of superheroes, really, but the mechanics of this are just fantastic. The game is really easy to explain, set up, and play, and I cranked out a "learning" solo game in under an hour. I love the sense of power you get as you build up your deck, though I could care less about the heroes, honestly. If this had a different theme, I think I'd like it more than I do, which is a lot. I can't wait to play with other people.

If you enjoy the game I recommend the White Moon expansion, which adds some more variety since you have to keep the villagers alive too.

Anyone tried the expansion that adds a 5th player as the bad guy?

Why didn't you people tell me how much fun Escape: The Curse of the Temple is?

The game mechanics are extremely similar to Ascension, with the main difference being that in Legendary you HAVE to build up attack power in order to score victory points and it's possible for all of the players to lose. However, I'd have to imagine if you like the mechanics of the game and would prefer a fantasy theme then Ascension would float your boat.

I like Ascension on iOS, but I think the theme is pretty thin. I'd much rather play Legendary.

In addition, re-go over the cylon actions during the sleeper agent phase of the game. The Investigative Committee isn't change isn't a errata thing. It's a balance change introduced in Pegasus. If everyone is new, then leaving it as its original see all version might not be too bad because in my experience, novice groups tend to have the humans lose.

Because it's too much fun to describe.

Okay, I'll accept that.

That's a good point.

I think it's fine to lose as the humans in the base set relative to creating the wrong impression about how dominant IC should be. YMMV. I would also say the "secrecy" suggestions in the errata are worth skimming so you have something in mind about what to say specifically when people are trying to figure out what's legal table talk and what isn't.

I still haven't played my copy, but I hope that's true.

One thing to keep in mind is that the ten minute playtime is a little deceptive, because the temptation to play Just One More Round is high, especially if you lose.

I lost track of how many rounds my wife and I played last night.

Also, the game is way better with the soundtrack, and they've conveniently put MP3 versions up for download so you don't have to go all 20th-century-primitive with a CD.

But unlike other 10 minutes games like Space Alert, there's no bookkeeping/resolution at the end.

Have you tried it with the Super Mario Brothers soundtrack?
https://soundcloud.com/lars-sveen/smb-escape

Another real-time game which I've been enjoying a lot of Space Cadets.

I had not. That right there is the best thing ever.

I had a look and it seemed to be out of print, or at least unavailable in the UK. Is it worth introducing it to players at the same time, or should I stick to the base game until I can find a copy?

I haven't heard anything about the 5-player expansion so I would be interested in knowing what people think about it.

While White Moon makes the game better, it also makes it a bit more complicated for new players (though it doesn't make the game longer!). So I probably would hold off on it until everyone had played once, unless they were all seasoned gamers.

I hadn't heard of the 5 player adversarial expansion either, and only stumbled across it when double checking White Moon's name on boardgamegeek.

I haven't played the second Ghost Stories expansion either.

I think Ghost Stories base only is a fine way to play it. White Moon does make the game more complicated for new players. It changes some things a little and adds a lot enough new things for players to consider during their turn that I could easily seen that it makes the game a little overwhelming for new players. This is in contract to something like On the Brink does for Pandemic, where I feel that the game is somewhat incomplete without it and wouldn't play base only by choice (even with all new players).

If I recall correctly, I have GS with at least two expansions (bought it used and all packed up so I don't remember). I should probably figure that out.

It's a good co-op game, if you can get past the "most experienced player directs everyone" angle, which is tricky as you still want some cooperation!

That's the main reason I'm curious to see what an adversarial 5th player would do, as then it'd be less obvious what the best strategy was.

The couple of times I've played co-op games I've been very aware of who is+ and isn't* quiet around the table for that reason.

Seems like the Black Secret expansion is pretty cool but makes the game harder. I did plan to get them both eventually, but I have to introduce the base game to my main group first.


+This is never me.
*This is always me.

Pandemic made me start hating co-op games. Because I'd play the game for whoever I was playing with, which is a shitty thing to do. But I want to win, and I usually know the rules better.

I prefer playing those kind of co-op games solitaire. At least with Arkham Horror, the turns are interesting enough that being told what to do is ok.

Have you tried information restriction coops? I have much the same problem, which is why I avoid Pandemic.

Just a few, but I want to try more.

I recently found a Ghost Stories buddy who is just as intensely into the game as I am. Now I just need to find two more! Then we can have massively grognardy in-depth strategy-angst over every single move together!

Pandemic is the worst for that, the mechanics are so clear that I can't stop myself from trying to optimize everyone's moves, and yet I'm having no fun doing so. Luckily I have no issues with the randomness-coop type games, I can relax and just go with the flow (you want to attack the Dunwich Horror? Sure, go for it!).

Initially I didn't like Arkham Horror that much because the I didn't find the mechanics of the game to be that good. However after playing it some more, I realized that the game isn't about the game. It's about the people playing the game and the experience.

Even though I do enjoy games like Pandemic/Ghost Stories/Flash Point a lot, I think I prefer real time cooperative games and limited information/hidden role partially cooperative games more. It isn't even because of any alpha gamer type problems. My gaming group is really laid back and friendly. I think it's just that they have a different feel that they have when playing them which makes them more exciting to me.

I think that's certainly my case. AH was something really special when I just played it with my wife as a lazy Sunday kind of thing, but after a few traumatic experiences I will never play it with more people than that.

Which reminds me, I should dust that fucker off now that we have an ipad and can try it with less overhead. Anyone do that yet? Do both players need an idevice or just one?

I've used it solo, as well as the free android version and it's really the only way I play anymore, as I went crazy and bought all the expansions over a two week period. I really wish they elegantly handled the Mythos cards too (they don't handle them at all currently). I don't think there's any reason both people would need a device, other than for convenience.

That's fantastic. I like using my newish droid even more than my wife's ipad, but if we can both have it then it's that much easier.

Holy shit those apps are awesome. I might actually end up playing Arkham Horror again.