What I Played At Some Point: JoCoCruise

One Night Werewolf, Imperial Settlers, Red7, Sheriff of Nottingham, Concept, Glass Road, Battlestar Galactica, Exploding Kittens, Johann Sebastian Joust, AquaSphere, Two Rooms and a Boom, Pairs, Lost Legacy, Dixit, Story Wars, The Resistance, Rock Band, Fantasy Life

I have been away on a cruise! A hip cruise, named after a guy with long, puffy hair, so it's okay, I'm not a huge nerd. That's not what this cruise is about, despite the insistence of literally everyone else I was with on the boat.

ANYWAY, this trip was mainly about playing board games in the best game room on the high seas. New games, old games, any game! That's why I went, for the great game room and maybe for some showing off. So let's go through what I played over the long week, possibly in alphabetical order.

What I Played Today: October 17

Nanuk, Smash Up, Dixit, Netrunner, BattleCON, Avalon, Dungeons of Dredmor

Lot of games today! First Nanuk, which is a bit of liar's dice. I've talked about it before, I'm sure. I didn't win, although I did pretty okay. I don't know, middling.

Then a game of Smash-Up. It took forever for the game to actually get going, because everyone was playing minions, but was spreading them out. Come on guys, break those bases. The game ended pretty quickly when the robot pirate player managed to dump a full 10 points onto a base into a turn, so that was cool.

A quick game of Dixit, that I somehow ran away with. Well, whatever.

Then a couple of two-player games while a full ton of people were learning Battlestar Galactica. I lost in Netrunner because man on man, there has got to be a better way with slowing down card snatching from the HQ. I have no control over what's there! I also lost BattleCON, because I chose the doppleganger character, which I hate, and my opponent was not easily copyable. We managed to go to time, probably past, in fact, because we weren't paying a lot of attention.

Then we went to a bar and tried to play Avalon, which was a bad idea! Some people missed the rules, some spies didn't see each other, some spies didn't even open their eyes, it was a disaster. Don't play games in bars if all players aren't within five feet of each other, everyone.

Then I was at home, and thought to myself, "Dungeons of Dredmor. That's a thing, right?" So I played that for a bit, looked around online, apparently a lot of people have made their own skill mods for it, that sounds cool. So I might play it again!

What I Played Today: September 7

Dixit, You Don't Know Jack

I ended up playing a game of Dixit with children somehow? Yeah, I don't know. Life is weird sometimes.

Then I got bored at the game store waiting for something interesting to happen, so I went home and played You Don't Know Jack. It's a game in which funny things happen! Did you know that teton is French for nipple? Neither did I!

What I Played Today: November 24

Apples to Apples, Dixit

I mostly drove today, but once I got there, I got to play a couple of party games with the family. They went exactly the same as they alwasy do. Everyone seemed to enjoy them though, so that's nice. Although a weird thing about the game of Apples to Apples, once I won, they said I was required to make up a little story with the cards I had won. Now I didn't want to do this. This seems like a stupid requirement, and I don't suggest you force people to do this.

What I Played Today: June 26

Trenched, Star Trek, Dixit, Nightfall, Battlestar Galactica

I invited everyone in town over for a game day, and we played some games. While everyone walked in, I was in the middle of a mission in Trenched, which is getting harder, as I had to defend two bases and had some jerks show up every few minutes to blow up my turrets. I had made an error in turret placement, and because I needed to bring a particular type of turret, I was in the tiny mech, making combat difficult. I managed to pass with 21% health on the bases, but I am going to need some more experience to acquaint myself on how this game actually works.

We played a game of Star Trek with a full crew, which has the noticeable advantage of often allowing you to get bonuses in skill checks for having multiple helpers, but your turn also comes around a lot less often, meaning you might have to swing the check with Uhura when it would be more useful to have Spock do it, but you just can’t wait two more turns to try it. But we did pretty well, getting the silver palm, and if we had concentrated in space more, we could have gotten the highest honor. Now I think it’s time to try it on moderate difficulty.

We also played a game of Dixit, which went pretty well, everyone had fun. I never have anything to saw about Dixit, it’s a pretty abstract game.

There was a mild attempt to get some people to try out Nightfall, but then the pizza showed up and somebody was playing Portal 2 and everyone stopped to watch him play that for a good hour and so we didn’t even make it thorough the first round. It was alright, my feelings aren’t hurt, but it was weird to have a game abort itself like that.

After much waiting, Battlestar Galactica made it onto the table again. We had tried to get everyone to play, but some people just started getting tired, so we had five players and a few onlookers. I finally got the Ionion Nebula expansion on the table how I wanted, so we started playing with that. Someone was the Cylon leader, and he immediately started the game trying to get a Super Crisis, so I assumed that he wanted us dead and now. We had no problem in space, which was weird, and after the first jump, it looked pretty stable.

Then, it became clear that people wanted to leave soon, and we would not be able to complete a game, so I made the executive decision to fast forward the game. I gave everyone their second loyalty card, destroyed a bunch of ships, knocked down the dials down by half and said, okay, let’s go from here. The cylon revealed immediately because he realized the game was afoot, and started to tear us apart. Two of our crew were sent to sickbay, but we had no trouble making the jump to the nebula. There the final decisions were made, and I really like this part of the game. I like how the decisions really impacted the game and who got screwed or helped. It turned out that we all ended up with few enough trauma tokens that nobody got expelled from the game, and we raced towards the last jump, with our morale and population in the tank and the decision points constantly trying to tick away our last strength.

Suddenly it was the Cylon leader’s turn, and after I reminded him that his once-per-game is super awesome, giving him three actions in a single turn, he jumped onto the Battlestar and immediately slammed on the FTL button, with our bar half-way done. He played the +2 to any die roll card, which confused me, but I quickly activated my once-per-game to force the die roll to be an 8, winning the game for the humans. It turns out the cylon leader wanted the humans to win, but had to play a supercrisis card, which was why he did what he did. Although he still left the game to a 50-50 chance, which seemed a bit cavalier. If only he had revealed what he was up to better, so I could have announced the die result sooner.

But I had fun! Hurray fun!

What I Played Today: December 14

Dixit, 7 Wonders

At the gaming store, in which there was cake for reasons I couldn’t really figure out, I played a couple of games. The first was Dixit, which I’ve talked about with great length. I won the game primarily because one player gave the exact wrong clue and my card looked like a better fit, so I got a whopping 4 points in one volley. The game also featured the clue “A bit obvious,” and then as it turned out, every card BUT the chosen card was voted for. I also finally figured out a pretty awesome clue for the card that has a kid on a horse about to ride across a rainbow bridge onto a glassy hillside: “Screw you guys!”

Also a game of 7 Wonders, in which I had to explain the rules multiple times, but it eventually came together. This game was tough because the person to my right was a bit tentative about collecting resources, so I was struggling to find things I could actually build around Age III, which ended up losing me the game, as I came in dead last. It’s interesting that a fair amount of the game is based upon what your opponents do, but consider you often see what cards you’re going to be handing to them…it might be intentional. Man, you’d have to have some serious game to set up your opponent’s hand to evolve exactly like you hope, then mooch a crapton of points from them with a guild that exploits that type of building. Serious game.

What I Played Today: December 4

Apples to Apples, Dixit, Rock Band, Kinect

It was a day with friends, and we did friend stuff; ate some food, played some games, talked about dildos. We also played some Apples to Apples, which went about as well as it usually does (satisfactory but a little dull), although someone stated how in one game somebody played Hiroshima – 1945 with the adjective Clean. Which is interesting because I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that example before, and not from him, which means pretty much everyone I know has a dark sense of humor, or they’re all assholes, one of the two.

Also hooked up the Kinect at a friend’s place to show it off, and while it was entertaining, it’s not really a system that works in a group situation. For one it required a bit more room than we had, so we ended up pushing a couch out of the way, and there was not a lot of places to be to watch. Also, whenever anyone walked between the sensor and the player, the Kinect freaked out, so eventually everyone felt trapped. So, after everyone got their fill, we switched to Rock Band. Not everyone really felt like playing, as we eventually dropped down to one guitar, one keyboard, and various vocalists. But it was still fun, as I got to sing a couple of old favorites, and some people who hadn’t hit the mike got a chance to sing.

Then a game of Dixit with teams, because that was the easiest solution that didn’t leave anyone out. People seemed to pick up on the game pretty well, and we only had one case where everyone or no one got it, when somebody made a veiled but obvious reference to the Truman Show in connection to the card that looks like a blatant ripoff of the ending. Otherwise, everyone seemed to get it and had fun. Working in teams had a weird dynamic; the person I was partnered with picked a card and left it to me to come up with a phrase, after I explicitly told her I was terrible at the game. But I thought of a couple of good ones, like “Spanish Fallings” for one that heavily featured rain. We eventually won after a good last round in which our card was chosen as the match by almost everyone but us.

What I Played Today: July 24

Three Dragon Ante, Pandemic, Endeavor, Dixit

I played a lot of games today, mainly because a friend was in town after a long while and we had the whole day free. There was a lot of board gaming, interrupted by a nap and dinner, followed by even more board gaming.

We played a lot of Three Dragon Ante, my friend’s favorite card game that was released by Wizards for D&D about five years ago, and recently received a stand-alone expansion (which is mysterious in itself). It’s a clever game, with a lot of luck involved though, and has a lot of fun elements, even if you can potentially get screwed a bit. The game can end pretty fast too if you’re not careful, as it ends when someone is out of money, and if there a few high rollers on the table, that happens pretty quickly. But I feels like a fantasy tavern game, if a bit complicated, which is nice.

There were two games of Pandemic, one we lost horribly when the Far East exploded, and the other we won pretty decidedly...even though we weren’t playing quite right. We had forgotten to move up the infection track after the third epidemic card, which means the game was going a little too easy on us. We did go out of our way to make sure that we got the killer combo of dispatcher and medic. I played the dispatcher, and I was awesome, moving everyone exactly where they needed to go. It was kinda neat, I wish we were playing perfectly.

There was a game of Endeavor that I lost by one point. I tried a slightly different strategy, quickly ramping up my culture to get more dudes and “considering” war, but I didn’t follow through, and ended up losing by one point. My moves were pretty forecast too early, and a player went out of his way to steal points from me by declaring war on my interlinked colonies. But he didn’t win either...so...

Also, I had a very interesting experience with the Spiel de Jahres winner, Dixit. I introduced the game to a few relatively non-gamers, started the round, only to have everyone guess the image I used. Then...I was completely and utterly ineffective, able to score only 1 point. I never guessed the correct image, and only once did someone pick my image, it was miserable. The second game we played went better, I’m getting better at how to make a decent sentence, but man, this game kicked my ass, and I have a bit of a vendetta against it currently. Stupid, lousy, blood candle.