New games I’ve played recently

ianoble    Board Games    

I’ve been fortunate to play some really great new games recently. Here are some brief thoughts:

Lords of Waterdeep

Sure, the complaints are that the game doesn’t have any revolutionary mechanics and the theme is pretty much pasted on. Once you start actually playing the game, none of that matters. Wizards of the Coast was able to mix a number of my favorite game elements into a very streamlined, smooth and downright fun experience. So far I’ve played with 4 & 5 players. Playing with 5 was only marginally longer and everyone still ended up within a 20 point window, from first to last. I’m looking forward to playing it again!

Last Will

This game popped up on my radar immediately after hearing about the theme of trying to be the first player to spend all of your money. Most games give you a little bit of cash at the start and it’s your job to turn that cash into fame and fortune. In Last Will you start with more money that you ever want and over the course of the game you blow it on boat parties, carriage rides, buying property and letting it depreciate, etc. Sure, there are some scale issues considering a dinner “costs” 4 and buying a property can cost 10. All in all the theme works very well if you can just think that some numbers are in hundreds and some are in thousands/millions.

I’ve only played 2 two player games, but I can see that the game has high replayability and is just downright fun!

In the Year of the Dragon

In the past few months I have been able to play many different games by many different designers, however I have not been impressed by one designer more than Stefan Feld. He just brings so many different and interesting mechanics to games. In the Year of the Dragon is no different. Now, I’ve played many of his newer games before trying this one, so I was a bit unsure if I would enjoy it as much as Luna or The Speicherstadt. Turns out I actually enjoyed it as much or even more!

This is definitely a survival game. One wrong move and you can have your whole strategy blown out of the water. The first game we played was with 5 and even though we messed up a few rules everyone seemed to have a good time. So much so that it was requested as our online, turn-based game for the week. Since then we’ve played multiple games online. I am a certified Feld Fanboy!
 
 
I still have lots of unplayed games on my shelf, hopefully these next few months will be filled with even more great new games!

From the Cold War to the depths of space (part 3 of 3)

ianoble    Board Games    

My third segment on games from the past year will focus on a game that is in genre that has really become one of my favorites. Co-operative board games are a nice change of pace from the usual “single winner” games. I’ve noticed that we tend to have more fun playing co-ops because there is much more communication between the players and much less AP. Everyone is always engaged and trying to make the best moves for the team, not just screw another player out of VPs or position.

The latest co-op game is centered around the Firefighting theme. A theme that has been severely underutilized in the boardgaming industry. I’m happy to see that Indie Boards and Cards chose this theme in their latest game.

Flash Point: Fire Rescue

One of the strongest features of a game is it’s ability for many different types of people to play it. Flash Point does a wonderful job of being simple enough to teach to non-gamers, but offer a number of options to make the game more complex and challenging for more seasoned gamers. The Family Rules are simple enough to teach to an 8 year old, but fun enough to play with adults. The game is still challenging enough so you don’t feel like you’re playing a kids game that can be easily solved.

The “Advanced Rules” adds some time to the setup, but each player can help so it’s not terribly long. It also adds roles to the game so each player can have a specialty. This has helped fix the overbearing player issue that is common to co-operative games. Each player can focus on what they do best; be it fix damage to walls, run the fire hose, etc.

I’m more than happy to have this game in my collection next to the grand daddy of co-operative games: Pandemic. It certainly holds its own!

The End.

From the Cold War to the depths of space (part 2 of 3)

ianoble    Board Games     Ascending Empires

Previously on The Noble Gamer…

In part 1 of my recap of the last few months, I wrote about my experience with a game that I never thought I would own. This article is about a very different game, one that has just about every element that I love about the boardgaming hobby.

Ascending Empires

After one of my very first game nights with my group, the host brought out this round, wooden board with these little pegs in middle and a hole right in the center of the board. As you can imagine, I was very interested in what the purpose of this board was. As soon as I flicked my first disc on that Crokinole board I was hooked! You’re telling me that there are dexterity games that don’t require you to slam your hand on the table to be the first to grab some object or that make you pull out pieces of a larger object until it falls apart? There are dexterity games with actual skill involved that can still be played while seated??

This brings me to Ascending Empires (sort of). The moment info started coming out up on BoardGameGeek that Z-Man Games will be producing a dexterity/euro board game with a space theme, I got very excited. Once the photos of the game came out, I was even more excited. Then at Kublacon I was actually able to see the game in person. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to play it, but I knew this would be something I should probably have in my collection. The day I was going up to Reno for my bachelor party/gaming night I came up with the brilliant plan to drive to my nearest FLGS (still 20+ miles away) and pick up a copy to bring with me. Not having bought a game like this from a B&M store, I was pretty surprised to see it ring up at around $60! I took a deep breath and said, it will totally be worth it. Glad I trusted my instincts.

The game is one of space exploration, technology building and space combat. All using little wooden pieces on a cardboard, puzzle piece board. You start out with just 2 ships (shaped as small discs) on your homeworld, 7 troops available to be used to discover new planets and to build colonies, research stations and cities and 0 level tech ability across 4 different disciplines. The brilliance of the game is in order to discover new planets you must flick your ships so that they land within the orbit of the planet you wish to discover. Each turn moves pretty fast because you’re only allow 1 action (although the move action allows you to do 2 “move” things”). Flick to a planet, discover the planet by flipping it over, putting one of your guys on it and moving you ship back to your dock…next player. Once you have control of a planet you can start building colonies (remove 1 troop to add a colony), research stations (remove a troop and a colony to add a research station) or cities (remove 2 troops to add a city). Each building gives to you different things, but it’s usually good to get research stations early because they help you build up your tech tree. If you have at least 1 research station on a planet, for an action, you are able to move your tech branch, for that color up to the Level 1 row. In order to move up to the Level 2 row, you must have research stations on 2 of those colored planets or have 2 on one of that color planet. Since you only start with 8 research stations you can only upgrade all techs 2 levels, two techs all 4 levels or somewhere in between. This allows all players to build their empire a bit different depending on the style of play they choose.

I absolutely love this game. I’ve played it with 2 & 3 and it really plays great either way. All of my games have unfolded differently, with some being discover heavy and some being very combat heavy. Since turns are very quick it is easy to adjust your strategy as the game goes on. Do yourself a favor and ignore all of the talk about how the board pieces don’t fit together so the ships can hit a seam and fly off course and go buy this game!! After you navigate to and discover your first first planet, you will forget there is even a board and you’ll just be immersed in a wonder space adventure.

In the 3rd and final article recapping my last few months of gaming, I dig into one of the best co-operative games I’ve every played.

To be concluded…

From the Cold War to depths of Space (part 1 of 3)

ianoble    Board Games     Twilight Struggle

Over the past few months I have certainly expanded my board game library, to the point where I had to sell off games that just weren’t getting played. Since September I have added around 18 new games. Of those, I’ve only been able to play about 10. This makes me sad. For this series of articles I’m going to highlight 3 of those games that really stood out and have made me very happy to have in my collection.

Twilight Struggle

This game sat in my ThoughtHammer cart for what seemed like forever, since I didn’t get in on the P500 deal GMT had. Normally this wouldn’t be the type of game I would be wanting to buy because of a couple reasons. First, the length of play is reason enough to scare of the wife, but secondly, the theme is just not something that would initially grab her. Luckily a couple of my gaming buddies mentioned that they would be very interested in playing. There was reason enough to pick it up!

After reading through the rulebook I was amazed how simple the game system was. Each player gets a hand full of cards, playing one at a time (usually), back and forth for however many turns there are in the current round. Obviously the complexity comes from what the actual cards do and how to best expand your influence throughout the world, but we’re not talking about a Fantasy Flight level of complexity here. I would call it brilliantly simple.

Obviously being our first game we wouldn’t be making optimal moves, but after the first few turns we were moving right along without having to reference the rulebook more than once or twice. I played as the US, after reading that new players should be the USSR (although I’ve read arguments for both sides since then). About halfway through the game I was really starting to see how balanced the two sides were. Most of my attempts to secure the Middle East were easily thwarted by the Soviets, but I was easily able to take control of South East Asia and South America. Africa, as you would expect, was a hotbed for strife. End the end I just had too much influence throughout the world and it was a convincing victory for the U S of A!

This is one of those games that sticks with you for days after you played. “I could have increased my influence in West Germany, which would have given me a foothold to get into the Middle East, which I could have used to gain control of Africa…” I simply cannot wait to play again and again and then again after that!

My thoughts on Flash Point: Fire Rescue and Ascending Empires will be coming soon…

State of The Noble Gamer

ianoble    Board Games    

If you have been loyal enough to keep checking this site, you might have noticed that the updates have completely stopped since September. There are many reasons for this, the biggest being that October was pretty much dominated by my wedding and honeymoon. During this hiatus I have been able to play a lot of game, some that were really great! So what I’m going to try and do over the next couple months is give brief recaps on the games that I’ve played, rather than full reviews. Hopefully this will get me back in the swing of things for the beginning of 2012.

Look for more content from The Noble Gamer coming soon…

Thank you to all my loyal followers!