I’m pretty sure more gamers are in your position than not. I think “can’t find someone to game with” is the majority state.
I remember I used to be upset when I was really little because nobody would play board games.
Now my kid gets upset when she wants to play 3+ player games and my wife is busy.
It’s always relative.
As far as I can tell there’s no set path to finding a group of cool people to game with. Every story of cool groups to play with I’ve ever run across has been some variant of “I made friends through the normal course of living my life and then we all played games together”
Speculation (have not tried):
If you try the obvious path of going to game stores and game meetups you only end up finding people who don’t themselves have game groups of their own for one reason or another and it turns out through the course of playing with them, you find out why.
My own group is far from perfect. As an example, I think we’re overly deferential. If one person in 6 does not want to play a game, the other five, despite all wanting to play said game won’t and will instead waste an hour or so debating what to play that isn’t the game they all want to play. I could complain about them more, but at the end of the day, they (mostly) take their turns quick, and are competent players and they’re good people. Minimum standard = met.
Risk Legacy game 10. At the end of this game, we’ve opened everything except the Do Not Open Ever packet.
I made a threat regarding a certain faction before we started play. Someone chose to call me on it. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but I acted without mercy to their detriment—and mine, but I’m already tied for the lead and wanted to make a point.
[details=Spoilers]No one, including me, should pick Mutants, and if you do I will attack you to the best of my ability.
The new Alien Island connects my beautiful, defendable South Africa to Western United States which is also the World Capitol. This should be interesting.[/details]
Got to a friend’s house for some gaming and it wound up being a short session. Had to entertain his kids for a while so we did My First Stone Age twice. Prob the best kid’s memory game out there. Then he showed me Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters, which is Mattel’s import of a very recent Kennerspiel winner. Was a really good co-op for the 5-6 year-old range. I don’t even think I own a co-op for that range, only a few baby game (3-4yo) or older kid (7+ like Forbidden Island) ones. But I’m not huge on co-ops so I can’t see myself picking it up.
Only thing of note that we played sans-kid was Ginkgopolis, which I’d never tried. We played with two and it felt like a strong game. I kinda ran away with it with my strategy of accruing ridiculous number of tiles and putting them all back in the bag for points towards the end. But I am always down for a city-builder and I’m curious to see if it plays well at 3 or 4. And this one I will also never own because OOP and mad $.
I started a Mice and Mystics solo campaign today. I enjoyed it! It’s giving me Redwall nostalgia. I love those books as a kid…
Does anyone have advice for someone who’s never painted minis before? I googled it and read some tutorials, but I’m trying to get as many people’s thoughts as possible.
You can find techniques on how to paint online, but before you even get to painting, you should wash the miniatures in lukewarm soapy water, and after they dry, coat them with a spray primer before you get to painting them.
Most miniatures, whether plastic or metal, have an oily residue on them which can prevent the paint from bonding properly with the plastic/metal. Washing them first removes this. Once you do that, prime the miniatures with spray paint, and I recommend buying paint specifically designed for this, whether from GW, Privateer Press, Army Painter, etc. I usually prime with black paint as the undercoat, as the paint in the nooks and crannies then become shadows, but you can also prime with gray, white, etc. Once you prime, you can start using other colors.
Hope that helps.
In all the years I did that, I never thought of using black primer. Always used this off white stuff.
That could have saved me a lot of time failing at inking.
Primer is essential. Painting simply doesn’t work without it.
Prime with matte black. It will slightly dull bright colors, but most bright colors require multiple coats.
Keep it simple to start with. Don’t get fancy. Simple contrasting color schemes.
Thin your paints. THIN YOUR PAINTS. Do multiple thinner coats instead of one heavier coat. This is especially important with bright reds and yellows, because they will tend to show brush-strokes.
Drybrushing is a good technique to learn. Take a brush you don’t care about (because drybrushing will fuck your bristles), get some paint on it, and then wipe almost all of that off with a tissue. Use broad strokes to hit the surface you’re painting with just the tip of the brush - you should wind up depositing faint flecks of color.
Drybrushing silver over black basecoat is basically the way to make anything look like metal. Drybrushing lighter color over darker color will help pick up highlights on things like cloaks and other foldy bits.
Don’t buy shit from Games Workshop. Fuck Games Workshop.
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Mandatory.
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Last weekend was the weekend of PAX. I only learned two new games, but played a lot.
Fabled Fruit - Not my description: “the Frog Fractions of board games.” It even meets Friedemann’s alliterative-Fs naming convention.
America - The second Friedemann game of PAX.
Power Grid: The Card Game - … and the third Friedemann game of PAX.
Spyrium - I appreciate worker placement games with some fluidity to the placement part, and Spyrium allows you to do clever things with your workers. I should really play this more.
New York Slice - This picked up a lot of plays quickly. Relatively substantial games that can take a large range of players are a good choice for conventions.
The King of Frontier - We played two games in a row that ended on conditions other than running out of tiles, which is a pretty sharp turn from earlier plays. This has grown on me since including the expansion buildings every time.
Traders of Osaka - I played a rule incorrectly for two years. Fortunately, I like the correct rule a bit better.
Rights - This is staying in my collection for now. TROLL is the only Oink game I’ve let go of, which is still a good game.
Mission: Red Planet - I used to think I didn’t enjoy majority games. What I have discovered in recent years is that I just strongly dislike Revolution.
Rolling America (new to me) - A game I bought at PAX and immediately played twice. I had read the rules before, but they don’t sell how entertaining it is to fill out your bingo sheet. It’s a very fun puzzle.
Quartermaster General - Italy and Japan became victory point machines in this game, and the United States didn’t start bombing Japan quickly enough to make a difference. The UK had a considerable front that stretched all the way through southern Asia - I love how differently every game of QMG turns out.
Codenames - I was happy to play the 3p variant several times in a row at the end of the convention. I’m not really interested in the competition, so much as trying to deal with the largest possible clues.
El Grande (new to me) - One of the few remaining 90s classics I was interested in trying, I wasn’t disappointed. I’m marginally interested in owning a copy, but even if I go out of my way to buy an older edition, the box is too big to fit on my shelves right now.
Could be the bidding mechanic in revolution
QMG: Was America asleep or did it get its ass kicked? It has next to no presence on the board.
[quote=“Raithnor, post:56, topic:248”]
QMG: Was America asleep or did it get its ass kicked? It has next to no presence on the board.
[/quote]Scott’s America was never able to check Japanese aggression. Japan won the war while we held Europe.
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This is what I dislike the most.
I was America. I played every deploy and battle card on the Japan side, none in the Atlantic. I also played one or two cards that let the UK build a bunch of units at once, and they ended up encircling all of Europe, so it was worth slowing myself down for two turns to play those.
I had a boat and a plane, and the cards, to attack, build a boat next to Japan, and then mill them for 12 cards. It would have taken like 4 turns to do this. It ended up failing because building an airplane was a free action. Japan built an airplane and attacked in the same turn, which I did not anticipate. Even if I did, I had no way to defend it. I even had to use a status where I discard three cards to keep my boat alive.
I still had enough cards to go in and mill them for 7-12 points, so it wasn’t a bad draw situation. I just needed more turns because of their attack. The game ended before then because of the 30 point rule.
I blame the USSR for the loss. During the game they were often reduced to a single unit. I think they were completely eliminated from the board at one point and had to come back in on Moscow? The Axis was scoring points off of territories that the Soviets should have controlled, and that is what allowed them to get the 30 point gap. If the game had not ended, the US position would have been much stronger in a few turns. Japan was completely decked. A Porsche that crossed the finish line right before the engine was about to explode.
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You forget that the USSR almost took Berlin in the early game. I, as Germany, had to be liberated by the fucking Italians, and was generating only one point a round for some time before I got by groove back.
Even during those times, both sides were scoring even numbers of points per round. The Allies impressive early board state was not reflected on the actual scoring track. The Axis comeback scored many points.
Late to the party here. I def fucked up in the end as USSR. My early game was super strong but didn’t reflect in points as you said. Then I totally ran out of gas due to awful hand. If anything though, it was Japan that won the game. He played flawlessly. He spent his entire deck on one big hurrah and won on the turn he ran out of cards. If the game had come back for one more turn, he would have been toast. I had fully bounced back as USSR and due to crazy upgrades was about to knock down all of Asia’s point generating capability. Take that shit over for myself.
Japan holding Australia most of the game didn’t help, either.