Board Games - 2022/2023

I'll post some pretty pictures soon, but I was wondering today, "Nod, do you play enough board games?"  Generally, my answer is, "No, I don't think I do."  Even when I'm stuck playing solo.  Lately I've been picking up all the Ryan Laukat games [Red Raven games]  I haven't played and learning them so a.] I can teach the wife and kid, and b.] I can host them at Con of the North.  So far, Ancient World and Islebound.  The first is Titans are on the loose and you're trying to coordinate the five tribes in the world to make a safe space. e.g. set collection of five colors. I really like the aspect of the soldiers getting more expensive unless you refresh/retire them and being able to snipe someone else's titan so they can't get the benefit or have to deal with a harder titan.  The latter game - Islebound - is pirates/buccaneers and it suffers a little with two people because you don't end up stepping on each other's toes.  But I like the them, I like the speed at which it ramps up after a few turns, and my wife enjoyed it quite a bit with a mentor, even when she lost.

I know how to play Above and Below, although I need to refresh myself.  And I have an inkling of how to play Near and Far.  Add in Roam, and there are five of his games I can host at a February convention. Laukat also has Sleeping Gods, but I don't own that [yet] and as I understand it, that's a whole other level of board game [it's a bit open world for a typical board game].  Beautiful art.  Everyone says that about his games.  But it's true.  A unique style that ties all his games together.

Anyway, back to the original question, "Do I play enough games?"  I think most people would say 175 plays in a year, regardless of the game/s, is a lot of games. Particularly given my cycling and reading habits and the time I spend working and going to local plays and music.  About every other day, eh?  Definitely some bumps around Gameholecon [just last weekend], Con of the North, and sometimes me getting my mitts on something I was really looking forward to like Obsession or Mists of Carcassonne.  The super light months, despite being cycling months generally, make me a little sad.  I'd much rather game than watch television, even though in the winter my television is synchronous with my cycling on the trainer.  I can tell learning the rules for new games is good for my head.  I function better overall.  It's parallel to learning new tech skills.

I DO need to play with more than my family. Maybe take advantage of those local brewery events and practice mentoring a few games. Aeryn spends a lot of time gaming with the U of MN students and friends.  I haven't really gamed that much with friends in the last year.  If work ships me off on a manager meeting, maybe I have to canvas the managers for gamers.

Undaunted: Normandy - Scenario 2: Montmartin-en-graignes

 I started solo playing Undaunted: Normandy again the last few days. I started it back in 2020 playing with my wife and once with Klund but, well, most of the world is aware of what sort of derailed people at that point.

I've been playing a few rounds of each scenario as I go.  I'm not very far along, but I've rediscovered my enjoyment of the game.

Scenario 1: La Raye I played three times.  The first two, the Germans beat the US so fast and so suddenly I thought there was something wrong with half my brain.  I pondered whether I'd inadvertently cheated playing solo, knowing what each side was sort of up to.  After all, I'm not using some set of mechanics to mimic an AI on the other side.  My simple rule is "the half of my brain that currently has initiative is the first to look at their cards and decide what to play for initiative."  It's not perfect - the second me can't completely forget what the first me did, but I generally have a plan before I look at the cards for each side, so I try not to cheat and I think I'm pretty successful.

So on the third play, the US tied up the center which is where the Germans were waltzing in the first two games.  Completely different experience.  Went for MUCH longer and the US had to really grind the left side of the board where the other victory points were to grab a win, and it came down to pinning [no more riflemen for one side] the Germans.

I've only played Scenario 2: Montmartin-en-graignes [looks beautiful on Flickr] once so far and the US won.  Photo below.  They split and went down both sides, staying heavy on scouts in the deck initially and keeping the deck small so the squad leaders could inspire to keep everyone in good cover.  By the time they got to the south end of the board, some bad rolls by the German machine gunners opened an opportunity to jump on the nest and pummel it into submission.  It's surprising how unlikely you are to roll an 8 or better with four d10 dice sometimes.  For the German part, they focused on the MG cards to keep suppression up, but might have been better with a bit more diversity for when things got close.

I did like that we GROUND through the fog of war cards.  I had a few turns where the US almost stopped for a moment just to grind them away when killing one surfaced another.  Made for a much more active deck and it might be what really won them the scenario. 

End of game - machine gunners popped off the board just for fun as the riflemen on the right already grabbed the one point they needed.  The push south started on the left and you can see the Germans went there, but then had to try and chase back to cover both sides with only one squad.

Gamehole Con 2021 - Day 2 Part 1

As I said...this will be a doozy.  Like 18.5 hours of gaming, although with some minimal gaps.  I even played solitaire - not the card game, but a game by myself - for a little bit to keep the high going.  I think after writing about Tapestry, I'll break this into two sections.  I should break it into a section per game for easier reading, but if anyone is reading this they can just go find coffee in the middle.

I started the morning with Tapestry.  I didn't have a game going into the morning, although E did, so I added one of the open slots.  Easier to do on a Thursday than a weekend.  Klund is, or at least was, big on this game and makes some accessories for the pieces.  I had never played despite his enjoyment of it and the fact that I like many other Stonemaier games.  Overall...fun, although long [took almost the full three hours], but the first time through I was at a serious disadvantage against both position [physically, it was important I read the far player's cards] and a few folks who'd played before.  Trying to unpack the iconology was difficult alone and not understanding the full benefit of finishing one of the four outside tracks put me at a disadvantage.  That became an issue because I moved far along on one track immediately only to have a guy with a different civilization power use it to basically pop to where I was and then take all the advantages that I had lined up in conjunction with my civ bonuses.  In terms of overall position, I went immediately from competitive to a solid fourth and a game of catch up.

That's all part of a game, I don't begrudge that and I don't mind losing at all.  But not being able to see his civ text on the far side of the table and not knowing it via some plays meant I was immediately kneecapped.  I know I was playing the game right because my turns were very long so I was leveraging resources to make resources in ways that efficiently extended me beyond the others' earnings, but in the end I didn't finish a single track and instead tried to play a very balanced game that stealthily took me to second to last despite that I don't think anyone even expected me to be anywhere but firmly and decisively last.  It definitely felt like some of the civs were way overpowered compared to others.  Apparently there's a lot of discussion around that conjecture.

I did enjoy the fun little buildings and mini games [cover a 3x3 for a bonus, covers rows and columns for a bonus, get tech cards for a bonus] that benefited from the base size and base shape of the buildings.  Made it very tactile, although honestly I'm generally pretty happy with meeples, cubes, dice and cardboard markers.  I have these next two images out of order...me earlier in the game, me later in the game.  Vice versa.  You can see the evolvement...

..from pretty empty to a board full of buildings, big and basic.  I'll note I also didn't like my era cards [or whatever they're called - the cards that apply to the "age" you're in].  My were generally a flat "counter a treachery" [which never happened] or gain a flat 10 points.  I think one basically did me no good at all, and the alternatives wouldn't have been any better.  The others' age cards seemed to have a LOT of interaction and focus.  Just luck of the draw there.  Once it gets going, I will admit it's fast.  Everyone can almost play through their turn as fast as they can move and as players finish up, the speed for the remaining players gets even faster despite all the pieces.  I will say that its ranking on Boardgamegeek comparative to Seasons seems wrong.  That's a very minimally strategic game in comparison.  Would I play it again?  Yep, but I'd make sure I could read all the civ cards first and take a slower approach to any one lane.

A general picture of the floor at Gamehole Con on a Thursday.  It was much more crowded on the weekend.  This was definitely preferable.  

E reading the Gamehole Con participants [e.g. famous, not rank and file] program.

That stuffy butt next to E is a Blink Dog collectible.  They do one every year for Gamehole Con.  E has all of them except the rare first year Owlbear stuffy.  You can tell it makes them happy.  That is indeed a wizard in the background.  I'll post a better picture of the wizard later.

This beholder in the vendor area was impressive.  If you peruse the Instagram tag, it was probably the favorite photo opportunity.

While I was playing Tapestry, E played Letters from Whitechapel.  E said it was difficult but really fun and they caught Jack the Ripper [one of the other players..."hey honey, I got to pretend I was Jack the Ripper this long weekend.  It was exhilarating."]

Bit more E playing Whitechapel.

We moved on to Fates of Madness next.  It's a very simple RPG card game.  As in a GM-lite tells a story based on the cards while the players try to navigate the encounter cooperatively.  You can search for treasure and trade it to upgrade a few core skills, bump each other's skills, and choose to attack or wait to make an attack more effective.  It was fun, although E and I died during the boss fight.

The hit points system is easy.  You move your card along the grid...at least until you end up dead.  I did get in a lot of healing before that happened.  Our game facilitator, game designer, and story teller was legally blind so we had to tell him the specifics of our status, but he had played so often he had the cards memorized and only needed to see the fuzzy nature of the card to know what it was and what it did. It was nice in that it was stripped down to almost the very basics with a few rules for bows/etc so there wasn't a ton to learn like in Pathfinder, which I've played before [and enjoy], but is complicated. It was a bit more like Tenefyr in nature which lies somewhere between this and Pathfinder.

This was in the vendor area.  I almost bought it because I know some folks in roller derby, including a team mate and one of E's early teachers, but I [mostly] trust the boardgamegeek ratings when it comes to spend versus fun for me and in the 14000 overall range, this wasn't near anything I'd played and enjoyed before.

I think in the upsell version that was there, you might actually get paintable figures rather than semi-generic wood tokens, which was indeed tempting if they could be tailored to particular local teams.

I can't tell what Klund is playing here.  I thought it was one of the Flip City variants, but on inspection, that doesn't seem right.  Wrong colors for one, and more placards than playing cards on his table. I can't pick it out from the publisher list for Flip City, although they also make Ponzi Scheme, which Apong liked well enough to buy.  It does seem to require using a finger to maintain where you're at which seems very inefficient.

Speaking of Apong, here he is - he showed up during the day.  I'm not sure what he's playing either, but maybe it's the aforementioned Ponzi Scheme near the beginning of the game when there's not much money in play.

There was a gap during my day and nothing to add without screwing up my schedule or rushing, so I wandered over to the games library to find something to learn by myself so I could manage my time appropriately.  I've always wondered about Tudor, so I checked it out.  Good news, per the rules, as the only player, I am the one who looks most like Henry VIII.  And, for that matter, the most like any of his wives including Anne Boleyn, with or without her head.  

Amusing aside, while I was checking out the game, I asked the librarian if she had come to Gameholecon as a Star Trek ensign two years earlier.  As soon as I did the guy behind the tables perked up and started watching me. She hesitantly said "yes" and I noted her hair was a much different color so she was hard to recognize.  At this point the guy moves from side eye to a bit more direct attention and I realized I was inadvertently, but clearly, in some sort of "hitting on her" territory.  I quickly added, "I was a winner in the Martian Dice competition" and things immediately became more relaxed and he and I chatted about Martian Dice and what a good game it was for a wide variety of situations including both family and bar/brewery.

Here's my setup for Tudor.  I didn't get to play test it much before having to head to another event because most of it was either still packaged or put away incorrectly, but I got the gist of play.  Roughly, pieces have different movement capabilities depending on which room they go to, and higher value pieces facilitate those moves from the staging rooms and have two moves of their own.  The goal is to get to the top of the board and secure an office by collecting and buying favor on the way, although you can be bumped from an office.  As you play you collect rings, and rings change your movement capabilities depending on the fingers they're on in conjunction with the initial rooms and the presence of a noble.  To the best of my understanding, the color of the rings does not matter, only the fingers/positions. But I disagree.  The colors do matter because you can go with a Vikings motif instead of a Packers motif in Packers territory.

For the end of Day 2, Part 1, E and I played Honga.  It's a super light game - more of a family game - where there's a saber toothed tiger named Honga who wants to eat all your resources.  You draw cards that have hands on them in four directions [a better card if you have the most mammoths on the board] and place them so that some hands point at Honga and some point at the resource/activity you want.  You can choose NOT to point at Honga, and then he'll come eat your berries or fish.  But not you.  See...family game.  You can climb a mountain to pray - first one to the top gets the most points and the mountain climbing starts over.  Collect fish, berries, etc.  Trade fish, berries, etc, for mammoths which are basically a tier 2 resource.  Collect resource bonus cards.  And trade mammoths and resources and cards for victory points [basically inventions and achievements as a stone age tribe].

It's amusing to have a bunch of adults sitting around playing a kids' game by Haba [company known for family games].  One nice thing about it is that it facilitates talking because no one has to overthink their choices.  Lot of chatter at the table, particularly when someone purposefully chose to let the tiger eat their things to make some other move.

Wonder Woman, Challenge of the Amazons - Round II

Three players against Ares this time.  E almost had us play difficult.  If we had, that three point life total difference would have had us losing by a point.  Instead...we won with a single point to spare.  If the game had ended without defeating him, he'd have taken us down with his next turn.  He already had the points on the board.  We did learn that leaving a couple orange cubes lying around can become a big issue quickly because of how blockades kick in off the enemy cards sometimes.  And we didn't optimize, but the intersection of relics and individual Amazonian powers can make a huge difference (anything that lets Diana use her single movement during planning to hop across the board, for instance).

It was a lot more fun with three people.  Gave it quite a bit of additional discussion and divvying up and determining how to use card interactions and teaming up.

Wonder woman, the Board Game

Whoa...post, right?  This last weekend, Poot and I played Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons, a cooperative board game by Ravensburger.  If you peruse my July reading list you'll see Boardgamegeek videos related to how to play and a full playthrough.  Although that second one has a bit of an error in that every time Ares moves, they're not dropping two orange cubes with him (Servants of War) if there are no Amazonians in his location to corrupt.  That makes a huge difference in the game as it leaves a few points of escalating damage all over the board and more options to get 5+ cubes in a location (which is a 3 point hit against your 20 "life").  The result:  so far against Ares, we've lost, and handily.  I do get the impression we might have an easier time of it with three players instead of two as it would bump up the card interaction, although also the draws for baddies.

There's a great step each round where you all plan together but, and they said this at the end of the video as well, it avoids the Pandemic-style solo game leader/dictator situation by then throwing the planned cards into your hand with some previously hidden cards that might be better than what you were planning.  And when that happens, you're free to simply try to play a better hand based on what you knew your teammates were up to.

There's that, and it's fast.  We finished up our first game in under an hour, even with being new to the game.  Took me longer to watch the playthrough.  And it feels even faster with the discussion portion being pretty spirited and interactive.  

It might have limited replay with three different villains and a couple of ways to escalate the difficulty, but I suspect they'll expand it at some point in the future.  If not, it's still a super easy game to teach a visitor.  You get to coop instead of playing against each other.  And it's a pleasant alternative to a  parallel game like Pandemic.

Betrayal at House on the Hill: Legacy

We've been playing a four person series of Betrayal at House on the Hill: Legacy.  Eryn, Pooteewheet, Me, and P (friend of Eryn's).  On Saturday we played episode one.  Which is a little disingenuous as there is an episode zero.  An introduction.  Episode one was more fun than episode zero, although the narrative elements make it really enjoyable.  It's basically an RPG with some boardgame functions wrapped around it.

I like the naming your character convention.  I went with little Weezie Lynn Gables and her teddy bear Sanford.  I got the Scholar role, which was largely pointless, and weird for a 12 year old.  It was more amusing when I drew a card that said I was chained up in a room and had to unchain myself.  I told my wife Sanford and I were play acting a bit of bondage, but I had escaped because we had a safe word.  Justifiably creepy for a precocious little scholar.


I was pretty sure I handled the game correctly and basically barricaded myself in a room on the top floor behind rows of traps that basically prevented the other characters from backing up.  So not only did I have traps between me and the baddy, I had all the other characters between me and the baddy.  This is undoubtedly how a 12 year old should approach being knowingly stalked by supernatural entities.  Make the adults deal with it and set up some Home-Alone traps just in case they're useless.

The Grizzled - Part II (corrections!)

Some updates after playing a four person game and a three person game.

• Four people: Me, Pooteewheet, Eryn, and Grumpa - loss
• Three people: Me, Pooteewheet, Grumpa - loss

I'd point out that the more than four hard knocks, but maybe support fixes it rule is also very hard to remember.  So I could have five hard knocks, even six if I had the double knock card, and getting support would allow me to get back under the four knocks equals death rule.

• Pay a LOT of attention to withdrawing as it causes conditions to disappear such as those other players may have that keep you from withdrawing.
• A speech gets rid of a card in each player except the speech giver's hand if they have that particular "bad" thing (snow, etc).  No.....that's not correct.  If you have one you can get rid of it.  That's the best thing, pick your own.
• You get a speech if you were the leader - so a card like Tyrannical can prevent speeches because the leader won't move.
• [That's not true, some players may have withdrawn and so there may be reduced support] If you fail, there's no support and the leader doesn't move.
• [This is incorrect, it's getting support that makes this happen.  It's independent of the leader.]  Becoming leader allow you to lose two characteristics (hard knocks) or regain your good luck.
• One example had the mission leader moving round robin.  Another had it moving to the person with the most support.  We liked the more support version.

Fuse

I cannot recommend Kane Klenko's game Fuse more adamantly.  Klund played the game with him at Gamehole Con and introduced us to it.  I picked up several copies as Christmas gifts for nieces and nephews and then bought another four for work-related collaboration activities.  One stayed with the family.  One is at work.  One went to Mean Mr. Mustard.  And the fourth became a present that was strangely already open.  But no less fun.  So I've personally purchased six copies.

Playing it at work was excellent.  One of the better developers I work with had a hard time with the game because he spent a lot of time figuring out the dice sharing to optimize it.  That just meant he was going to run out of time.  The one teammate who came late and didn't get to play, just watch, bought a copy to take on her island cruise.  My family has had a brilliant time despite all these losses (the 5 player losses are my team at work) and an equal, if not more, losses on my daughter's phone.

I've found two people who don't like it.  One who's super competitive and can't stand collaborative games (you're working together to share dice against a 10 minute clock), and my wife, who finds the whole experience upsetting and stressful.  One of the developers/testers at work said the same thing - she particularly hated the iOS application that made all sorts of loud noises at it counted down to zero.  She even asked if I could turn it off.  I told her only if I could make the noises myself.

Terra Mystica

Wednesday night this week was gaming night. A couple of co-workers I hadn't met before (brother and sister) talked me and Kevin M into a game of Terra Mytica.  Mike's sales job wasn't good up front.  He said it's like Cataan, and Carcassonne, and Small World, and Puerto Rico, and x, and y, and z.  That was a bit intimidating.  But it wasn't as difficult to play (strategy, yes) as that description.

The idea is that you're terraforming the land and each person is a particular race (Small World) with certain bonuses.  They prefer a particular type of land and try to terraform (shovel) it to their preferred land.  Once it's their preferred land they can build on it (Cataan) and upgrade the huts/towns to buildings that produce more workers and priests. There's a separate track for using the priests to generate points by having worshipers.  Biggest town (7+ points of buildings in proximity) gets points and towns generate other points/bonuses.  Many things let you cycle magical energy so you can bet yet more works/priests/shovels.  And there are cards that you can pick from each turn that have a special skill/money/etc (Puerto Rico).  So it comes down to a balance - do you focus on the worshipers, the town, blocking others, straight up scoring...

I focused on worshipers, but only because I had all sorts of priests my race really couldn't use.  And then, while everyone was pondering that priest board, I was squirreling away workers so that on the last turn I could increase my shoveling ability, which decreased the cost per shovel, and allowed me to maximize shoveling per worker.  The benefit there is that the last turn had a 2 pts/shovel bonus and I terraformed everything I could reach just to get the points.

The joke while playing with a couple of software developers is that those buildings look a lot like something you'd see in a Visio diagram.  We were pretty sure we were looking at network diagrams of servers (taller rectangles), databases (cylinder), and server farms or data centers (that big block).  It's not nearly as fun if you think you're building a redundant network.

Cycling Party

I've backed a LOT of games on Kickstarter, and this is intriguing.  Cycling Party!  But I can't bring myself to back another game.  It could have to do with the fact I have at least three I haven't played yet, two of them sitting on the table, one still in the wrapping.  I believe there's an expansion currently in the mail as well.  And if I start to mentally walk through the four places I keep games, I'd guess there's more like five, not including a few I've only played once and a bunch I wish I was playing more often but haven't because there are too many new ones to try.

I so want a bicycling game.  It would go well with my dystopia game and I could figure out how to do a mash up.  But I'm on hiatus until I get through at least a few of the boxes starting to fill up the house.  Maybe my Secret Santa will get it for me.

Sunday Morning Ride

Yesterday, Kyle and I went to Cook in St. Paul to try out their breakfast.  It was raining mightily, so I drove up there instead of pedaling.  I don't do lightning and/or thunder.  Wet is fine.  Electrocuted is not.  Great breakfast.  I had a Frenchcake which was part hashbrown, part pancake, and topped with poached eggs and served with a side of french toast and duroc bacon.  Way better than I expected.  Kyle had the Korean pancakes which set off some Facebook exchange with my sister about things that look like breasts.  Fortunately, before the cops came in to eat, Kyle pointed out to me that I was bleeding.  Not a little, a lot.  I think the barber nicked my neck the day before and I'd scratched it.  The result was blood all the way down the back of my neck and washing across the left front side of my neck.  I looked like Dexter.

So today, I tried to make up for my lack of bicycling breakfast by pedaling to Colossal in south Minneapolis.  Unfortunately, it was perhaps the first time in two years I didn't have cash with me and Colossal only accepts cash or local check.  So that was a no go and I'll have to try again.  The Hot Plate didn't open until 8:00, fully 45 minutes later, and although I started to hoof it up to Longfellow, I changed my mind and decided just to go home instead.  A bowl of Trader Joe's pseudo Cherrios was not a great alternative to breakfast at a new place, but I fixed it by making buckwheat and blueberry pancakes and banana and mango pancakes for lunch and storing a bunch for the week.

It is WET out there.  Hmm...I think I mushed my pictures a big.  Flickr doesn't link the same way it used to (well, the navigation is different) so I'm still ironing out some news kinks.  Fair trade for it being free.  So here's what I saw on the trail near the Mendota Bridge.  Enough rain that the cliffs are starting to be unstable.  You could hear it yelling about what a bastard the cliff on the other bank was and that it was going to throw all it's shit out the window and that was my sister for f*ucks sake! and more.  I'm sure they're finding it a competent therapist.

It doesn't surprise me it's unstable.  Last time I went down into St. Paul there were a few large rocks next to the trail and one on the trail.  It's obviously getting a bit wet and dangerous.


This is near Lake Nokomis and Lake Hiawatha.  That garbage in the near part of the frame is everywhere along the walking trail.  It's like it cleaned up everywhere, and then dumped it on the tar.


Here's a better picture and you can see all the flotsam and jetsam.  No Ariel though.


And here it is on the trail at Lake Hiawatha.  I went offroad at that point.


I forgot to mention it was darn cold as well.  A nice cold front rolled in on Saturday, so at 5:45 a.m. there was a ton of fog and it was chilly enough to make my hands ache and the dew bead up on my track suit (just the top - I'm not a wise guy).  This was much later; closer to 8:15.  At least at this point I could see the cars coming about the time I heard them.  Earlier I'd hear noise and not see anything until it was on top of the intersection.  I find it difficult to believe anyone drives around in pea soup fog without lights on.


I zoomed in a bit to catch the church on the far side of Mendota Bridge.  Downright Cotswolds in nature.


So a nice ride.  We rounded out our weekend with Edge of Tomorrow: Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day, which both Eryn and I really enjoyed. Eryn caught The Fault In Our Stars, which I managed to avoid, with mom.  We played Settlers of Catan and Compounded at Ring Mountain (and found a quart of reserved Chocolate Chili Pepper Gelato for me!).  And today, as a graduation gift, I got Eryn Star Trek of Catan which she spent hours mulling over and playing with, despite only having one family game.  I'm getting a reputation as a bit of a pain in the ass when it comes to gaming because I win so much in our family games.  I got lucky in Star Trek of Catan because I used Nurse Chapel to steal a resource from Pooteewheet, which resulted in stealing longest road, and then I couldn't get rid of Nurse Chapel (you have to use it against someone with more points, and that act put me in the lead).  But it worked out well because it locked her down and no one was taking the excellent resource distribution I was getting late in the game.  On the bad side of things, I discovered the drive on my lawnmower isn't working appropriately anymore and I had to push mow the hill that is the back yard.  So I'm feeling fully exercised.

Euphoria

Eryn and I took a stab at playing Euphoria this evening.  It's the game of building a better dystopia that we backed on Kickstarter some time ago.  A lot of people backed it as it raised 20 times their goal.  It's been in our queue to try out, but we had a lot of other games to play first.  I was a little worried about how long it would take to learn given all the pieces, but the rules were quick to apprehend, and once we got going, we even figured out a bit of the strategy on our first run.  Although I think as it's a resource/placement game, playing with more than two people would make it much more fun.  Too often one of us was chasing the other's lead instead of carefully planning.

The goal is to build a better dystopia and manage your workers - the dice - to collect resources and products and crate new workers, open markets, dig tunnels, and score points.  The workers are represented by the dice and the pips are important as having workers too smart - total pips - results in their understanding of the predicament they're in, and they flee the coop.  All the while the levels for the various areas increases as resources are collected, changing the collection strategy and opening up your henchmen who provide some special actions and bonuses.


I won the first game, but it was within a point of each other.  I suspect the only thing that helped me was that one of my henchmen let me place my new workers right away. My second worker was too smart for his own good though, and took off.  The markets, where you can score victory points, are tricky because if you're not careful and contribute, you have to suffer a penalty or choose to play catch up and eliminate the penalty.  For example, every three rolled on a worker for me cost a resource.

Reclaiming your workers/dice from the board requires a turn, as does placing one.  Coupling that with the danger of them getting too smart (you roll all of them when you pop them off and the total roll determines whether one takes off) requires some strategy.  If you have three workers, you're pretty sure you'll get less than a 16.  Four or more, it gets dicier (ha) and you're more likely to lose a worker  Although you can choose to only pull three and hope the other one pops off because someone else wants your resource spot.


Excellent game play.  Fast.  Lot of thinking, even in a short two-person game.  I'll definitely be pulling it out next board gaming day.  The stack of minions is pretty sizable.  Basically two card decks.  I like it that I can find people I know in the deck.  Here's the two people I went to Run Lola Run at the Trylon with last night.


This one is pretty cool.  Not having to pay a resource is powerful as the variation in resources means you're generally short of at least something you need.  The minions are tagged to one of the four factions on the board, so it's in your interest to focus on a faction as pushing it's progress level to maximum allows you to score a point for each minion in that faction.  Matthew looks pretty shift with his sash.

47 Ronin and Bored Game

My dad, daughter, and I (three generations) just got back from 47 Ronin at the local theater.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 12%.  I'm not sure it deserved a 12%, as in it probably deserved something better.  It was a pretty run of the mill adventure movie.  The critiques seem to point out that it was slow paced for its length.  I'm surprised.  I thought the bad reviews would be more around the fact that all 47 of them kill themselves at the end.  That's not a spoiler.  At least not if you're not so Western you've never read anything about them.  What it didn't do, in my opinion, is really showcase more of the Ronin - particularly given all the famous Japanese actors in the movie.  That would seem to warrant a bit more personality and interaction between the ronin rather than so much of the chatter being between the bad guy and his witchy girlfriend and between Keanu and Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada).

I recommend this article from Laughing Squid about the 80's style Bored Game and accompanying video.  Very amusing.


BORED GAME™ from Dark Igloo on Vimeo.