Its not like I have 300+ board games ready to go…
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I played Inis for the first time over the weekend and really enjoyed it. I was really surprised at how streamlined it is, especially compared to it’s spiritual predecessors, Cyclades and Kemet.
I’m not usually a big “dudes on a map”/area control type of gamer, but I enjoyed Kemet because of it’s civ building elements and cool technology tree. However, in Kemet, a lot of the time I would end up focusing too much on getting cool techs and abilities and not enough time on actual combat, so I’d end up losing the game.
Inis smooths over all that, basically getting rid of the techs and research trees of Kemet, while still keeping the really fast combat and strategic placement elements. I really enjoyed it.
Also, the art of Inis is absolutely gorgeous. Quite possibly the most beautiful board game art I’ve ever seen.
Inis is wonderful - politics, driven by three interlocking victory conditions, punctuated by a tense action draft. I love how moving a single clan into someone else’s territory can carry so many meanings, from great mutual benefit to a victory-spoiling dagger straight to the heart.
Reportedly, the action draft is good enough to carry the 2p game by itself, which is quite remarkable for a game driven by multiplayer politics.
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The multiple interlocking victory conditions were really cool. When we finished the game, two players achieved victory. We all thought my one friend had won because he was the Brenn, and the Brenn wins ties if multiple players achieve victory. But none of us realized that one of my other friends had actually managed to achieve two victory conditions simultaneously, which beats the Brenn’s tie-breaker.
I really enjoyed the game and you’re absolutely right that just moving one clan into a new territory can have all kinds of implications.
@DemoWeasel and I were at BLFC - which is a furry convention, not a game convention. Somehow, I still played half a dozen games on Saturday.
Goodcritters and Root were on-brand for BLFC. Goodcritters shines with a mean boss willing to screw over half the table - I made it my business to be that boss. Root was 5p; cats, birds, two vagabonds, and lizards. Everyone was in contention to win except my birds, who were on their back feet the entire game thanks to a wall of cult gardens and a particularly evil arrangement of clearings on the winter board.
The opportunity for 2p games came up a lot, and we played Shards of Infinity a number of times. I don’t have a lot of insightful thoughts, only there are several reasonable ways to play a given hand - compared to Star Realms where often the only decision on your turn is what to buy.
Res Arcana - enjoying without the starting draft again. As long as you’re using all the tools available to you (and discarding for resources), an awkward combination of artifacts isn’t a tremendous disadvantage.
Finally played a real barnburner of a game of The Estates, alliances breaking and reforming from beginning to end. That dynamic had been missing from the first two games I played, it was exciting to see it emerge this time.
We also played a very one-sided 8-round game of Quartermaster General with the Alternate Histories cards. Germany put the allies on their back foot immediately by crushing France with one of the new event cards, Italy sealed the deal by capturing the Suez canal on the first round, and we never recovered in Europe.
I wish I could remember why I hated Inis
My local game store did International Tabletop Day today. We started quite a bit later than last year, but I still managed to play a cool 8 hours of games today. Weirdly enough there was a lot of turnover of the people from last year, and we managed to fill out a good group regardless and were more than a dozen people at the end.
First game we played when we were only four people was Unstable Unicorns, a pasty game in the vein of Exploding Kittens with cute pictures and bad puns. Nothing major to write home about but a fan thing to grab when you are sitting around.
Next we played 5-Minute Dungeon. This is a very fast paced game where every player has a different character and deck of cards. A dungeon deck in the middle determines what cards need to be played to get to the next card in the dungeon deck, with each player able to contibrute cards. This stressed quick-thinking, coordination and resource management under time-pressure, as you only have five minutes to overcome the entire dungeon deck and the Boss at the end. It sounds elaborate but it is very fast to lean and fast to play, as the name suggest. We played once through all five bosses available, with the first two as a group of four, and the last one as a group of five when another player arrived.
Then some other player arrived, but decided to go eat ice cream with their friends first before coming back. I already had ice cream after lunch while waiting for the shop to open, so in the meantime I played a bit of Paku Paku, a dice rolling game. Each player starts with a die in front of them which they roll until they can either pass it to the next player or have to add a tiny plastic dish to the growing tower in the middle of the table. But the thing is that all players are doing it simultaneously. If a player either has four dice in front of them or causes the dish-tower to collapse, they lose and have to take some minus-points. Very fast paced, but zero-strategic depth.
After the ice-cream group returned we started playing Growl with 8 players. This is a werewolf variant where cards in players hands decide if they are wolf or possibly dead. Players have to assign new cards openly to other players, and there is a night-phase where players can force cards onto their neighbors while remaining hidden. Unfortunately the game is trivial to cheat, even unintentionally, as there is no way to keep the werewolves honest with their game actions and sometimes humans can too inadvertently cheat.
After that we played another game with a hidden traitor mechanic, Saboteur, a card game in which dwarfs are building a tunnel in search of gold, while a subgroup of players is trying to, well, sabotage the whole thing by running them out of cards or options to continue digging. This game is very well done in my opinion and was great to played, but we noticed that winning and losing largely depends on how many saboteurs are on the table as this can vary depending on how the role assignment shakes out (you always have an extra card than there are players, which is returned to the box unseen).
Finally we played Kampf gegen die Korinthenkacker, which is Cards Against Humanity, but in german with jokes specific to austrian society. I laughed till my head was swimming, then I went home to finally eat something.
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Same, although we still took our normal Saturday trip home to play games in the evening, so it was like 6 hours of gaming, 3 hours of driving, and 3 hours of hanging out.
I absolutely loved Quartermaster General: Victory or Death – The Peloponnesian War. Ever since we played Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage last week I’ve been on an ancient history bender, which colors my opinion a little. I’m just going to have to play every QMG game from now until forever, I guess.
I’m finding Res Arcana really interesting; after 7 games I can see opportunities I didn’t before, and reliably find 10 points in 4 turns (or 12 points in 5).
I rarely know what I’m doing in Indonesia (moreso than other Splotter Spellen games) but I’m always happy to play. This time I got bullied out of contention around the end of era A and never recovered.
We accidentally made the fifth scenario of Arkham Horror: The Card Game - The Path to Carcosa much harder by using the wrong version of one of the monsters, but somehow stuck the landing without taking any (non-mandatory) trauma.
Quartermaster General: Victory or Death was a nice companion for the ancient gaming that started with Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage last week. I also received a used copy of Commands & Colors: Ancients, continuing the Second Punic Wars with @DemoWeasel using a different game. We swapped sides and played the Great Plains scenario twice. Two 6-4 games for Rome, and a tie game for us.
Fairy Tale, Sticheln, & Unlock! Expedition Challenger to round things out.
I’d like to play Command & Colors. I’ve only played the more recent fantasy variant (Battle Lore, which was hot garbage).
Yeah, out of curiosity I searched and found that old BattleLore review, waaay back in the archives. I haven’t played BattleLore myself, but skimming BGG discussions, C&C:A has a few systems that aren’t in BattleLore:
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Evasion. Units that are attacked by slower units (eg. light infantry vs. heavy infantry, mounted units vs. foot units) can choose to make a fighting retreat, greatly reducing their hits taken and preventing their attackers from making a momentum advance. This comes at the cost of being unable to battle back, but lets you to screen with light infantry / cavalry / etc.
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Leaders. Leaders attached to units give a bonus in close combat to attached units and bolster morale. However, they have a 1/36 chance of dying every time their unit takes losses, and they are worth a victory banner by themselves. Extra funny when Scipio Africanus eats shit on an extreme long shot from a random Balearic slinger’s bullet.
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Leaders are also important for several command cards, and the presence of a leader gives foot units a bonus attack after a momentum advance. You generally want units in formation with your leaders. You can also reposition them to pair them with a different unit.
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War elephants and rules for rampaging war elephants. There are probably similar units in Battlelore but I’d rather have war elephants.
Adding to that final point, you also have context for every scenario in C&C: Ancients, because they’re all historical. That’s not directly related to the quality of the game, but it’s a plus for me since I’m not already invested in… whatever the setting of BattleLore is.
On open ground C&C:A tends toward neat lines of infantry, because as soon as there’s a hole in the line the adjacent units lose their morale boost and risk breaking in close combat. Terrain might change things a bit with fordable rivers and hills etc.
I haven’t played Command & Colors: Ancients, but I have played Memoir '44. It’s basically the same game as Battlelore with a different skin.
Battlelore also tried to get its history on. I believe the very first scenario was Agincourt.
That doesn’t seem like a terribly balanced or fun scenario.
“OK so I have all the archers, and now you get to watch all your shiny cavalry die facedown in the mud.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“Neither was the longbow. Congrats, you learned something today.”
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Yes. “Agincourt”
It was simplistic to the point that no decision was made at any point. They didn’t even try to make it an interesting introduction to the game. The scenarios in Battle Masters were more compelling.
There’s a rundown in this BGG thread, probably better than I could do after playing one and not the other:
Generally speaking balance isn’t a dealbreaker in Commands & Colors since the game is short enough to play each side once. But you’re not going to learn much about the battles from it, either. The Cannae scenario in C&C Ancients won’t give you a shot at recreating the historical outcome because you’re never going to pull off a double envelopment in C&C. The epic scenarios (with a team of field generals and multiple activations per turn) might scale things up enough to make something like this possible.
BattleLore had no idea what type of game it wanted to be.
At first it was billed as a “historical” game, but then they started introducing elves and dwarves and turned into a generic fantasy strategy game. Then FFG pretty much abandoned the game and reimplemented the C&C mechanics into Battle of Westeros, which was pretty decent, but didn’t sell all that well apparently, so after a few expansions, FFG quietly killed that game off as well.
FFG has a pretty bad track record with miniatures games outside of X-Wing. See BattleLore, Battles of Westeros, Dust Tactics, Runewars (the miniatures game not the board game of the same name), Tannhauser, etc
It remains to be seen if Star Wars Legacy can break their curse. Normally, I would be doubtful, but the Star Wars license can work magic.
I think the advantage of working with the Star Wars license is that Star Wars knows what it should be and if it isn’t you will hear about it… in volume.
Some midweek gaming with Anthony, escaping from Innsmouth and Xanthippus’s victory in the First Punic War.
Everything is on fire outside, but I’m safe in this locked room.
Carthagenean elephants. There used to be more.
Regulus lost his leader on the left flank.
They won’t be going home to Rome.
Since @DemoWeasel and I had some free time, we played Mansions of Madness and Commands & Colors: Ancients at home - the Carthaginians have been on a winning streak so far, but we’re playing both side of every scenario.
New Frontiers continues to reveal Puerto Rico-esque richness. You get to answer lots of questions about timing and sequencing. Sometimes you sweat it out and really have to plan for the sequence of the following 3 actions you won’t be able to choose… you know, Puerto Rico.
Bill was doing as well as his historical counterpart in Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage… right up until he tried to sack Rome. To be honest, I barely lifted the siege with Varro, but it was do or die and if I lost the battle (a very real possibility) it was probably over right there. Bill’s copy of Falling Sky: The Gallic Revolt Against Caesar was still set up on the other half of the table, about two inches and 150 years away.
Now that we have a copy, Pipeline is just as wonderful as the demo version I played last year. A cruel machine that forces you to plan several turns ahead, and doles out shattered dreams and surprising opportunities.
Also: Shards of Infinity, Arkham Horror: the Card Game, and Chronicles of Crime.
