Board games anyone?

[Zohar]

Without some of the quasi broken combos you can do, I don't really see how some of the later scenarios are beatable. I mean I guess that's the point of the game and all, but we min-maxed pretty hard when we played this and a lot of games were still super dicey. Without min-maxing I can't see how it would have worked at all. That said I guess having funding can definitely help, especially if you abuse those cards with certain relationships.

Like you said - I think that's kind of the point. I don't think we were particularly lucky in our initial setups, but the game didn't seem too hard, I think we ended up losing about 4-5 months? That sounds pretty average from what I hear.

As for researcher, that is one of our top picks when playing vanilla Pandemic, it's an incredibly useful character for us. On the other hand, we hardly use the soldier at all in Legacy.

[plytho]

As for researcher, that is one of our top picks when playing vanilla Pandemic, it's an incredibly useful character for us. On the other hand, we hardly use the soldier at all in Legacy.

We're researcher fans as well. That and dispatcher. They're usually essential for our curing strategy. Medic is number 3. Scientist and operations expert are the least favorite ones. I think in legacy we didn't use the scientist at all.
Legacy:

Spoiler:

Actually we didn't use most of the new characters either. We got the quarantine specialist. And the replacement for the one you lose in september(?) was a new character as well I think, but I don't remember which. There was a lot of arguing before each game to decide which roles to use but we always played the same ones.

[Zohar]

Operations expert is fantastic at the beginning of the game, to set up a few extra research stations. My husband's parents, who are VERY into the game, make life easier for them by including the "new role" card in the deck so they could, in theory, switch the operations expert to someone more useful.

Legacy:

Spoiler:

We did end up using some of the new roles, but I generally agree with you - people's existing relationships are so handy that it almost feels like a waste to choose anyone new.

[SDK]

No love for the scientist? She's pretty great. We've got her decked out with a coworker and a rival to help make it happen. In the base game, scientist+researcher is one of my favourite combinations to play with.

[Zohar]

We don't really play scientist in base game, it feels like too much concentrating on finding cures and not enough flexibility to deal with crises.

[Chen]

Scientist + Researcher with the co-workers was a mainstay in all our games barring maybe one or two months. The rest were rotated between Soldier, Quarantine Specialist and Operations Expert. Dispatcher is one of the best powers but with all the upgrades and such that had gone onto other characters, they never seemed to fit a role we needed. I think we lost 2 games overall but a number were ridiculously close.

Spoiler:

Basically we left researcher and scientist to do the main curing and then the other two roles were combination of "deal with Coda and fulfill other objectives". The Quarantine specialist is so good at blocking outbreaks. The Operations expert made those "build X military base" goals super easy, especially if you just needed to end the game. We also gave her the power that if she was on a military base she could quarantine adjacent cities which can be very good if you can just drop bases whenever you want. Soldier was basically just around for zombie control, running around and blowing them up with grenades. Downright broken with paramilitary escort, though clearly that comes and bites you later.

[Zohar]

Yeah quarantine specialist was a lifesaver during those games.

[SDK]

We don't really play scientist in base game, it feels like too much concentrating on finding cures and not enough flexibility to deal with crises.

That's kind of what I like actually. There's strategic play between them needing to split up to deal with outbreaks vs. needing to come together to find that cure. The strategic planning in a two player game with just the scientist and researcher feels much more cooperative than any other combination.

[Chen]

I'd think scientist + researcher in a two player game would be pretty tough. Usually you need to be running all over the place to deal with things, isn't it hard to get to the same city to trade things?

[SDK]

It's not easy, I'm not saying it's a super powerful combination, but it's a fun teamwork kind of challenge (moreso than other roles where it often feels like you're each just doing your own thing). It's a good combination if you play it right though. You need a couple of well placed research stations and good planning, both for what cards you will use to fly vs. cure, and when and where to meet up to make the best use of your actions each turn. Being forced to have your play align with each other makes for a good game that feels a bit different from other combinations.

[rmsgrey]

In Legacy, several factors combine to make cures less important as the campaign progresses, particularly if you get Positive Mutations going - the additional objectives mean that you can't end the game early by focusing on cures and getting some lucky draws (it's theoretically possible to win vanilla Pandemic before the first Epidemic in a 5-Epidemic game), and actually finding the required cures gets easier, so it's a stronger strategy to focus on not losing and making sure you can meet enough of the other objectives and kinda let the cures take care of themselves...

[plytho]

I've played two games of vast: the crystal caverns now and they've both been fun. Thanks to rmsgrey and Gwydion for recommending it.

We played with the same five people twice and are rotating the roles. We're playing campaign mode where the winner increases his difficulty level. I won the first game with the thief but that was a practice game so no level increase. The goblins won the second game by killing me (the knight). In the first game the knight had a really bad time. The cave had set up all traps and no treasure making it very tough on the knight. The cave was more generous in the second game and I had more fun than my predecessor. Then I got hit with two goblin attacks in one turn and it was done.

I enjoyed the different feel of the two roles and look forward to playing the goblins the next time.

[plytho]

I've been enjoying Vast this year and I'll have played every role once when we finish our session later today.

For next year I'm looking forward to pandemic legacy season 2. We'll be playing it real time again: play each in-game month in the corresponding month of 2018.

[rmsgrey]

I've been enjoying Vast this year and I'll have played every role once when we finish our session later today.

For next year I'm looking forward to pandemic legacy season 2. We'll be playing it real time again: play each in-game month in the corresponding month of 2018.

I've not played Vast for a while - waiting for the additional roles to arrive before going back to it.

I'm playing through Pandemic Legacy Season 2 at 1 month per gaming session - 2 gaming sessions per month, so should finish December in early April (though with Season 1, we decided to continue into December from November rather than leaving it for another session). As of the end of April, we've played 6, won 3 (March did not go well...), not counting the Prologue. It's sufficiently different from vanilla Pandemic that it's definitely worth playing the Prologue at least once before starting for real. It feels like, after Season 1 was very restricted in some ways as a proof of concept, Matt and Rob have felt free to mix things up a lot more this time around...

[Xanthir]

Yeah, my group that I did S1 with just started S2 as well. I agree, playing a prologue game or two is worthwhile, just so you get a good sense of how to efficiently move supply around.

We've only done January so far, and already holy *crap*.

[rmsgrey]

If I have one piece of advice (without spoiling anything) it's to make sure to read everything carefully - and be willing to reread things before each new session so you don't forget things.

We've taken to doing a couple of things to help track things during the game too - we put the plague cubes on the incident track rather than in the designated stockpile, and, for the prologue objective of building three supply centers, put supply centers on the objective card - that way just placing them automatically tracks progress rather than having to remember to update the trackers each time...

Other games I've been playing a fair amount recently:

Betrayal At The House On The Hill (with Widow's Walk expansion) - it's a bit random whether you get a great Haunt or a terrible one, and some work better with more players, some with fewer; some when triggered early, some late. The flavour's generally excellent though - you're basically playing a slasher/horror movie in boardgame form - right down to the first thing you do being splitting up to explore...

Abandon Planet - a recent game from Don "The Resistance" Eskridge. The meteor apocalypse is happening. All of you have mostly-completed rockets to escape with, but need to get the supplies needed in order to stand a chance of survival. You can loot supplies from the surrounding area, but if two players try looting the same place on the same turn, only one of them can get the loot. If you pick the wrong spot to loot and find yourself under an incoming meteor, then you don't get anything that turn either. Your rockets can't hold enough supplies on their own, so you'll need to find a partner to escape with - but you don't decide who that partner is until both of you are ready to launch. Either someone escapes in time, or you're all still squabbling over scraps when the ground crumbles under you and everyone loses...

Codenames - a 5x5 grid of random words. Two teams, red and blue. The team leaders have shared access to a secret map revealing which colour each word is (red, blue, white, or black). On your team's turn, the leader gives a one word clue and tells you how many words of your colour it's a clue to. You guess words until you guess one that's the wrong colour, or you've guessed as many as your leader's number plus a bonus guess (to pick up words you missed on a previous round's clue), or you decide to pass. A team wins when all the words of their colour have been guessed; a team loses if they guess the lone black word. Then play again with the people who were complaining most loudly about the clues forced to take over as team leaders...

[SDK]

Codenames is a fun game. That one's on my Christmas list.

I'm just about done Season 1 of Pandemic Legacy (only December left to go*). Gonna have to pitch Season 2, see if we want to continue the Legacy.

Spoiler:

*Damn that backstabbing Quarantine Expert! She was our best character too!

[pseudoidiot]

I've played a few games of Betrayal at Baldur's Gate now. I really enjoy it. It's basically Betrayal at House on the Hill, but with a couple updates I really like. The omen roll is done differently and the different characters have some fun abilities.

Anyhow, the scenario that I played the other night ended up being a lot of fun. I'm putting it behind a spoiler, but I'm going to talk about it in really vague terms, so that even if you do wanna read it it hopefully doesn't give too much away.

Spoiler:

It basically boils down to there being one traitor that you have to kill. But it turns out that if an adventurer manages to kill/defeat the traitor there's one last roll. And if the adventurer loses the roll, then they now become the traitor.

So there was the traitor and 2 adventurers. I managed to defeat the traitor, but then I failed the resulting roll. Down to me and the remaining adventurer. And that adventurer managed to defeat me. And then also failed the roll, thereby winning the scenario as the traitor. I like to think that we all won in that case.

With that setup it was really the most entertaining way it could possibly end.

[rmsgrey]

So, I backed the second edition Kickstarter for Gloomhaven. So did a lot of other people. There were some production issues, and some shipping issues, but I now have just shy of 10 kilos of processed wood pulp (mostly - there's some plastic in there too) including a number of mystery packages, a 52 page rulebook, over a hundred individual scenarios (I got the solo scenarios as well as the base game) and one burning question: who am I going to get to play this with me?

Oh well, it's a nice problem to have

[pseudoidiot]

A bunch of my friends got that. Somehow it wasn't even on my radar, so I'm not sure how I missed it. Luckily I have a local friend with a copy and I'm top of the list to get in on it. So I'm pretty excited.

[Xanthir]

Same re: Gloomhaven. Luckily I have an existing couple that we already regularly play boardgames with, especially legacy stuff - we're working thru Pandemic Season 2 right now. When that's done, we have Gloomhaven and a new one - Charterstone - to work thru. I think we've got 2018 pretty much covered. ^_^

[rmsgrey]

Same re: Gloomhaven. Luckily I have an existing couple that we already regularly play boardgames with, especially legacy stuff - we're working thru Pandemic Season 2 right now. When that's done, we have Gloomhaven and a new one - Charterstone - to work thru. I think we've got 2018 pretty much covered. ^_^

Yeah, my Pandemic Legacy is through April (May's scheduled for Saturday) and should finish late March/early April. The problem is that we're playing at my local boardgaming club and I don't think I want to try carrying Gloomhaven there and back a couple of times a month for however long we end up playing it - and I'm not sure I want to commit to another Legacy campaign immediately after this one finishes - might be nice to mix things up a bit - nor to wait that long to get started with Gloomhaven (and I definitely don't want to take both games for the next half dozen meetings...)

[Xanthir]

Uggggggggh, we lost both games of March and April in Pandemic:S2. The March games were the standard "fuck, we're out of funded events, this is gonna suck" losses, but the April games weren't our fault - we had a bad run of luck right at the end of the first game, and then just got destroyed by terrible luck right at the beginning of the second (happened to put the epidemics at the top of the first two stacks, and had bad card distribution as well - there was no way for us to shuttle enough supplies deep into America to avoid death, even had we reacted immediately and strongly).

Spoiler:

So yeah, we got to scratch off both the "lose 4 games in a row" and "have a city collapse" cards at once. :(

On the plus side, we'll have an absolute fuck-ton of funded events next game, and for the next little while. Assuming no more terrible luck, the next 2-3 games are gonna be easy, just in time for the inevitable terrible plot twist!

[rmsgrey]

We lost both March but won April, putting us 3-3 (lost first January). We unlocked sticker 60 and what follows in late March, which made a big difference. On the other hand, we're thinking we may have overdone the recons having now done all 5 initially available.

April was helped by having applied both Well Stocked in late March and drawing both between each pair of Epidemics.

We had our first city collapse in early March if memory serves.

A general tip is to reread all the archived reference material before each session - compared to Season 1, a lot more hints for what to do to progress the story are hidden in the fluff...

[Xanthir]

Phew, after the disastrous double-failures of March and April, then the skin-of-our-teeth success in May (even with 8 funded events (nearly the entire set) *and* the 4-losses-in-a-row bonus), June and July were nice, easy wins. We breezed thru, never losing any population (in June the plague-removal card was drawn *just* before the last turn; in July the plague only showed up in places with bases), doing a lot of searches, and finishing up our recons.

We're now dreading August tho, with only two funded events and the introduction of the HM. It's... gonna be bad.

[pseudoidiot]

We just did our first game in March and it did not go well at all. Oof

[rmsgrey]

Yeah, word on the street is that March and April are generally reckoned to be the toughest months. Our May was unsettlingly easy - once again, we started with both Well Stocked cards in the initial draw, and we won after only a few turns each, with no Plague Cubes on the board. Also, before starting the game, we looked over the situation and all the information we had and laid out a bunch of things we'd like to achieve over the next few games because they seem plot-relevant or likely to offer a major boost. Out of something like 6 of these long-term goals, we only missed completing one of them (and they are, indeed, all helpful)...

June next weekend, and we find out whether our luck is going to hold.

[plytho]

Just finished February with a win so we're out of funding now. That word on the street doesn't sound too appealing

I'm kind of confused about [March]

Spoiler:

3 extra epidemic cards at the beginning of March. Unless we missed something there was no explanation what they're for?

[Xanthir]

@plytho

Spoiler:

There'll be a new rules sticker showing up soon - you'll start increasing the number of epidemics as you add more city cards.

[pseudoidiot]

Just finished February with a win so we're out of funding now. That word on the street doesn't sound too appealing

I'm kind of confused about [March]

Spoiler:

3 extra epidemic cards at the beginning of March. Unless we missed something there was no explanation what they're for?

re: march:

Spoiler:

It's possible you read too far through the Legacy deck? If I remember correctly those extra Epidemic cards only came out after the legacy deck card that says to read after the first game in March. I could be mistaken, though. I wasn't the one reading through the Legacy deck. But we definitely didn't get extra epidemic cards until after we played a game in March (which we lost).

[plytho]

Spoiler:

It's possible you read too far through the Legacy deck? If I remember correctly those extra Epidemic cards only came out after the legacy deck card that says to read after the first game in March. I could be mistaken, though. I wasn't the one reading through the Legacy deck. But we definitely didn't get extra epidemic cards until after we played a game in March (which we lost).

That is possible, thanks. I'll check with the guy that owns the game.

[rmsgrey]

Just finished February with a win so we're out of funding now. That word on the street doesn't sound too appealing

I'm kind of confused about [March]

Spoiler:

3 extra epidemic cards at the beginning of March. Unless we missed something there was no explanation what they're for?

re: march:

Spoiler:

It's possible you read too far through the Legacy deck? If I remember correctly those extra Epidemic cards only came out after the legacy deck card that says to read after the first game in March. I could be mistaken, though. I wasn't the one reading through the Legacy deck. But we definitely didn't get extra epidemic cards until after we played a game in March (which we lost).

Also:

Spoiler:

I'm pretty sure it should be 5 extra epidemic cards (at least we've ended up with 10, and the post-game gives you rules for up to 10 epidemics)

Meanwhile, we've finally embarked upon Gloomhaven, playing the first scenario, and achieving a glorious... defeat. With hindsight, we would probably have won if I'd played what turned out to be my last turn differently - if I'd lost a card on a big attack immediately rather than using it to (almost) disengage and try to buy an extra couple of turns. As it was, we came up one enemy short of victory...

[pseudoidiot]

Meanwhile, we've finally embarked upon Gloomhaven, playing the first scenario, and achieving a glorious... defeat. With hindsight, we would probably have won if I'd played what turned out to be my last turn differently - if I'd lost a card on a big attack immediately rather than using it to (almost) disengage and try to buy an extra couple of turns. As it was, we came up one enemy short of victory...

We played our first Gloomhaven adventure a couple Saturdays ago. We succeeded, but it was close. One more turn and people would have started dropping due to exhaustion. But we have a better idea of the flow of things now. And did a re-read through of the rules to look for things we got wrong. Didn't miss too many things luckily. We're planning to do our next adventure tomorrow evening. I'm a fan of it for sure though!

[plytho]

Pandemic march confusion resolved

Spoiler:

It turns out some of the legacy cards had slipped in the box after our first game and the three epidemic cards ended up in the wrong place. My friend's wife checked the deck and those were the only cards out of place.

[rmsgrey]

Pandemic march confusion resolved

Spoiler:

It turns out some of the legacy cards had slipped in the box after our first game and the three epidemic cards ended up in the wrong place. My friend's wife checked the deck and those were the only cards out of place.

One of the less good changes from Season 1 to Season 2 is swapping from the reusable wallet to plain shrink wrap for shipping the Legacy Deck.

[pseudoidiot]

Ended up getting my own copy of Gloomhaven, along with a re-usable sticker set (so the game can be more-or-less reset back to totally fresh) as well as The Broken Token's organizer for it. That thing is a life saver. Almost worth it for the monster tuck boxes alone.

Anyhow! My partner and I have no played 4 scenarios on our own (had to replay one because we failed it the first time). We did the first 2 main story missions and then a side quest, which ended up being pretty fun.

I think it's probably safe to say we're pretty addicted. If we hadn't had to do things like buy groceries and eat meals we probably would have played a few games more this weekend.

[rmsgrey]

We've played some more Gloomhaven - managed to complete the first scenario on the third attempt - the second attempt was a disaster and we didn't even get into the third room; the third attempt was fairly close - my friend's Spellweaver burned out shortly after opening the third room (but did end with a stack of gold); my Tinkerer retreated back to the first room, used his own trap to kill the remaining melee enemy, took out one of the two remaining archers with direct damage, then managed to hook gun the last enemy through two traps the enemy had laid down to finish him off with a couple of turns to spare...

Next session will be a new scenario.

Meanwhile, I've also got persuaded into playing Charterstone - a worker placement game with a 12-game legacy campaign leading to a replayable post-campaign board (the board is also double-sided so you can buy a reset pack and play the campaign a second time). This does mean that I've currently got 3 legacy-style games active - Pandemic Legacy Season 2, Goomhaven, and Charterstone - which cuts into my opportunity to play other things...

[Ginger]

Only nerdy RPGs board game I played that wasn't like, chess or checkers, was: D&D I've played as like two paladins I believe? Both women and one was half-elven and the other was a drow. Ha-ha I just love lovely adore those elves I guess? And D&D has way too maths oriented combats rules for me, the combats take F-Forever, you couldn't even take a bathrooms break or else ppls would just RP the party leaving you behind... well, maybe that last one was a slight exaggeration, yet: I HAVE been left behind in RPGs when I just step out to deal with my life. Otherwise the games were very well constructed: One of which was even w/a woman FROM HERE. She made a special D&D board w/some program? And we played and chatted via that program and it kinda made it feel like my favorite chat services AND An MMORPG? That was a totes hilairs way to play D&D online.

[pseudoidiot]

Things have been kinda busy so it's been like a month since we've played Pandemic Season 2. Last night we played April and we won in 6 turns, which is probably the fastest I've ever won a game of Pandemic.

Detailed information under spoiler.

Spoiler:

We decided to use the immunologist for the first time because being able to pull cubes out of the reserve is definitely more important. Also he starts in Buenos Aires, so we figured he'd be a good candidate for connecting to the Lost Haven over off the coast of South America. So first turn was having him make some supplies and connecting a road to Lima. This of course put Lima's city/infection cards in their discard pile.

Second turn, me playing the Administrator with an ability to, once a turn, put a supply cube on any city I have the card for. So, I create supplies 3 times in a Haven giving me 6 supplies (thanks to Opal giving +1), then I drop one in London, because it was out.

Third turn: Radio operator takes most of my cubes, then heads down to the middle east because things were getting in bad shape.

First epidemic card comes out. Washington gets emptied out, but no new incidents, luckily. New York already had a plague cube from game setup.

Fourth turn: back to the immunologist. Heads over through Lima and over to the new Haven so we get all the new stuff that unlocks. Most importantly the hidden supply cache which will give a boost to supplies every month from now on. Then heads up to Washington to try and keep it under control.

Second epidemic card comes out. Washington almost explodes, but a lucky draw kept that from happening.

Fifth turn: The administrator has an ability to discard a card from their hand and take a matching color from the discard. The Lima card is sitting in the discard and has two searches. So I go to Lima and get the card out of the discard pile. I only have one action left. I decide to search the sea first, which ends up giving me another turn. So I search the land.

So now, we've found a lost haven (1 objective), searched twice (a second objective), and connected one city (almost a 3rd objective).

Sixth turn: back to the radio operator, who connects the middle east to Africa (no new cities, but helps in pathmaking), and then connects Frankurt to the grid, giving us our 2nd new city, which gives us our 3rd objective and wins us the game.

We'd thought about extending the game a bit to try and build a supply depot that we could make permanent, but because of what was happening on the east coast of North America, it didn't seem worth it. Better to quit while we were ahead.

It was a fun way to win so fast and things pretty much had to be lined up just right, but it was pretty great getting to take advantage of our good fortune.

[rmsgrey]

It was a fun way to win so fast and things pretty much had to be lined up just right, but it was pretty great getting to take advantage of our good fortune.

Ummm... You know that bit on the "Build 3 new Supply Centers" objective card where it says "Mandatory"?

Yeah.

On the other hand, I've just realised that we probably made 2 different rules mistakes in our September game (both making the game a little harder) and still ended up deliberately holding off on winning so we could do some non-objective stuff to help out long-term. And that was the hardest game we've played since April, so if you get yourself set up right, and don't get too unlucky, you shouldn't have too much trouble right through to the endgame months (from October, you have fewer objectives, but lose an additional supply cube each month, suggesting that's where The End starts) - though probably taking more than 6 turns.