Yesterday, I played ...

[Barbi]

Clank! , 4 players - a really neat and good deckbuilding game. The dungeon crawl is giving the pressure and the pace to the game. We played it with the whole family and it was a blast: I won with the most impossible luck ever, both in what I draw and the colors of Clank! (noise becomes wound if the Dragon is catching you) drawn from the bag ... I won at the very last minute by 3 points ...

 

Great Western Trail - 2 players - another story there, I tried a full building strategy I totally messed up, I lost by 50 points ...

[Mr Lee]

Marvel Vs 2pcg game - Interesting game, very much like Magic the Gathering. Needs some more work on it to be a good game but the mechanical base of it is sound and it has a lot of room for improvement.

[Not Quite Dead]

Yesterday, at a friend's house, I played at two games for the first time.

 

We started with Ascension - Rise of Vigil, a competitive deck-building game, in which you have to acquire Honor Points by destroying monsters and recruiting heroes. You have three resources to gather at each turn: Energy, Battle Point and Mana (or sort of, not sure this was the actual name of it). You use Energy to activate special powers of your artifacts or your heroes, Mana in order to acquire new heroes and artifacts, and Battle Point to defeat monsters (obviously).

It's quite a nice card game, with good-looking artworks, (although not for everyone's taste).

 

After that, we played at The Big Book of Madness, a cooperative game in which you play dumb teenage magic apprentice who just opened a grimoire that should have stayed close (well, you now teenagers). That evil tome starts to summon monsters that you must destroy during the invocation by removing curses without turning mad. Each apprentice belong to a House: Fire House, Air House, Water House and Earth House (just like in some presocratic Hogwarts). During your turn, you must gather enough magic points of the Four Elements to remove curses, cast spells, support the other apprentice with your magic points or improve your deck. Despite a rather childish look, it is a good cooperative game, quite strategic.

I had much fun yesterday evening playing these two games, and found the second one slightly better.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Not Quite Dead

[Barbi]

really love deckbuilders and Ascension ... I don't play it enough though :(

[Bawon Samdi]

I'm playing a lot DC Comics Deck Building Game (I know, they could have look for a cooler name). Numerous types of games (free for all, semi co-op, full co-op, team vs team, solo, ...) and the whole DC Universe to play with:

 

[Not Quite Dead]

Yesterday, I bought Kingdomino, in order to play at it with my son and my parents during the holidays.

 

 

It's a simple game of domino, in which up to four players use tiles in order to build the kingdom with the most points. Points are acquired by assembling fields, forests, mines, pastures, marshes or lakes. But these regions have only a value if there is a building on it (for instance an inn, a sorceror hut, a woodmen camp, and so on).

 

On this example, each square of pastures value 3 points (an inn with 2 crowns + an inn with 1 crown) but the fields don't bring any points.

 

The order of play changes when you choose the tile you'll get on the next turn, which is nice, as one may have to choose between getting a good tile or being the first to pick a tile on the following turn.

 

It's a simple system and yet a very enjoyable game, with a cute design. A game is quite short (approximately half an hour).

Edited July 1, 2017 by Not Quite Dead

[Bazman]

I got to play a friends, first published game...Now the pressure is on to review it.

A quite profound, worker placement, potion making, screw over your friends , game. With a very tight economy. It looks cute but is very evil.

Blackwood is the name of the game and it should be popping into stores sometime in august-september...in France only. 

 

[Not Quite Dead]

Hum. This Blackwood game sounds interesting... I like worker placement games, like Agricola. Could you come back to us when this is available in shop?

 

Kudos to your friend for publishing a game!

[Bazman]

As soon as I know, you'll know 

[Not Quite Dead]

@SentMa: Shouldn't this topic be in 'Board games', like in the French Community Forum ?

[SentMa]

[Not Quite Dead]

On 11/07/2017 at 10:33 AM, Bazman said:

As soon as I know, you'll know 

I was in Strasbourg yesterday and I think I might have seen it at Philibert's...

 

On the moment, though, I didn't remember the name of the game, so I haven't bought it... yet.

[Footballzs]

Over the weekend I played Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings (2000 version) for the first time in quite a while. A cooperative game, one of the first if not THE first, which pits the hobbits against Sauron. The hobbits must destroy the ring, Sauron must have the darkness overtake them. When I last played it (a few years ago) I wasn't a fan but I really enjoyed playing it this time.

 

Not sure why the change, maybe I had a better understanding of the rules. Also I probably immersed myself in the theme more than last time.

 

I played 4 times and won twice and lost twice.

 

Apparently there is a revised version released more recently which is slightly different.

Edited August 7, 2017 by Footballzs
Spelling error

[Not Quite Dead]

Yesterday I played Henchmania. I was hooked by its neat and humorous illustrations (it was an instabuy when I saw it in the retail), but the game seems to be more than a pretty ugly face.

 

 

In this game, up to five players are lords in the medieval city of Montfleury. As the king is about to appoint his new seneschal, you will have to use your henchmen in order to get enough Renown Points to get this prestigious office. The game mechanic is quite simple: the game is divided in four rounds, and each round in three steps. First step: each player places their meeples on quarters of the city that allow him to draw specific cards. For instance, the Castle quarter allow you to win Renown with entertaining henchmen, while the Church quarter get you cards that may modify the issue of duels with other Lords, or the effect of other cards, and the Armory gives you equipment for duels.

Once all meeples have been placed in the town quarters you may win additional cards for each quarter where you have a majority.

 

Second step, you play the cards you've drawn. Some of them have a permanent effect, other must be activated or discarded when you use them, and the other are instant. During this phase, you can defy the other players in duel, which bring you a lot of Renown points.

 

Third step, you apply the effect of your permanent cards.

 

A game lasts less than one hour.

 

After the first game, I was slightly disappointed by the fact that most points are made by duelling with other players. I'm not sure the other way to get Renown are effective enough, but this is not something that can be told for sure after only one game.

Edited August 7, 2017 by Not Quite Dead
Spelling

[Bazman]

My daughter likes to play this.

On 8/7/2017 at 4:31 AM, Footballzs said:

Over the weekend I played Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings (2000 version) for the first time in quite a while. A cooperative game, one of the first if not THE first, which pits the hobbits against Sauron. The hobbits must destroy the ring, Sauron must have the darkness overtake them. When I last played it (a few years ago) I wasn't a fan but I really enjoyed playing it this time.

 

[Not Quite Dead]

Today, a friend coming to my home took a game in order to play it with my son.

 

 

Escape is a nice cooperative game of dice in which explorers must escape a temple of doom, fit for a seven years old. In order to achieve that, you must cooperate to explore the temple, find altar on which you can put green gems. The more green gems you've placed in the temple, the easier the escape of the final room. Rolling the dice allow you to discover new area of the temple, to move, to help other players, to perform actions, and so on. On the dice, there are symbols that help you to progress (torch, key, explorer), one doomed symbol that locks your die (black mask), and one blessed symbol that unlock one or two dice (golden mask). What's nice is that you can cooperate to perform actions and help people whose dice have been locked.

A game last ten minutes, during which you must sometimes hurry back to the starting position, to avoid to be attacked by some unspeakable thing in the dungeon that will weaken you for the rest of the party (by taking you one die). There was an audio track with ambient sound that tells you when the danger is close to you and when the time is out.

My son loved that game, and I must say I enjoyed it too.

Seems that in the Big box, there are expansions, but we only played with the base game.

[Epaka]

Since Halloween I've been playing Elder Signs with my girlfriend quite a bit... We up the atmosphere by cranking soundtracks from John Carpenter and Dario Argento films while we fight to contain the Great Old Ones!   Here's a look at the custom game-mat that I put together to organize this great little game:

 

Edited November 16, 2017 by Epaka