Be Excellent To Each Other

Merchants & Marauders looks most excellent - I fancy me some piratey goodness.

I was a little disappointed by Zombies!!!, I have to say.

It does, but at £50. Hmmm.



I think I am a bit less enamoured with it now than when I first got it, but I have not played it for a while, and the endgame really, really does drag. Having the expansion card set does help a lot, though.

I'm due a bonus this month. On the downside, Mrs K isn't too interested in boardgames, except the old ones she had as a kid - so she'll play Hotel and Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs, but not much else.


The gameplay is a little samey, to my mind. Myself and a couple of chums had a game not too long ago and we lost interest fairly quickly.

£50 is beyond my impulse purchase level, and it had better be good/I had better play it regularly to make it worth it, I suppose. I don't really have a "gaming group" up here, just grab who I can when I can. Closest is Nottingham for board gaming chums I think.




I think I enjoyed it most when I had gotten the new cards and we were using them almost every turn on each other to hinder the progress of, well, anyone, really. It is teh cards that make the difference and maybe more zombies. I dunno right now. maybe I should think.

EDIT: I think the games anyone should have for 2 players and up are Carcassone, Ticket to Rides, Pandemic, Munchkin and Settlers. Although tehse are the ones I own.

Got Catacombs and Netrunner over xmas. Very different to the types of game I typically play and exciting due to it.

Catacombs: Imagine Hero Quest mixed with Subbetto. One player is the 'Overseer' and has a bunch of monsters (little wooden disks) the other players are fantasy tropes (Barbarian, Wizard, Thief and Elf) aka little wooden disks.

And you flick them at each other to fight, bouncing off columns and stuff and general stupidity results. It's ace.

Whereas Netrunner is asymmetric Magic the gathering crossed with poker and minus the horrendous business model of Magic. One player is the evil corporation and the other is a hacker trying to steal their stuff.

Lovely.

I'm used to Lave posting about cool iOS games, so was looking for them on the app store.

Doh!

I am twitching at NetRunner but who to play it with???!

Catacombs is great, but the rules are a bit shit and vague in places, and I don't really like the default way the dungeon is set up, though I've never bothered to try an alternative like the labyrinth.. I've also used the exact same sentence that you did, multiple times! "Catacombs: Imagine Hero Quest mixed with Subbetto"

I got Catacombs from Santa as well! Although the description I went with was "Descent crossed with Shove Ha'penny".

Also: Escape... From The Temple Curse (if you believe the box) or Escape: The Curse Of The Temple (if you believe BoardGameGeek) or Curse The Escape From The Temple! (if you're just screwing around) which is sort of Forbidden Island crossed with Space Alert crossed with Yahtzee. It also wins some sort of prize for being the game that provokes the most bemused looks from anyone who walks into the room halfway through a game, seeing as they generally find a bunch of grown men hunched over a table rolling dice in a frenzy and bellowing at each other over a CD soundtrack of Mysterious Ancient Temple Noises.

Roda - have you played 'Nightfall'?

Initially very confusing, but plays like a treat on iOS.

Yeah, I've only played the iOS version but I've had a lot of fun with it. I like it more than, say, Ascencion (which is Playdek's other big iOS deck-building thingamy), but as someone who has two-and-a-half shelves of White Wolf "Supernatural Being: The Overwrought Noun" books that could just be because I'm a bit of a mark for the theme.

I get the feeling Nightfall is something that's much better suited to being an iOS game than a physical one, though. I do like the "Dominion, but with two exclusive Supply piles each" setup but I'm not convinced there's quite enough game there to justify the time to physically set it up and break it down each time. Also: I've got a sneaking suspicion it would manage to be too short a game but take too long to play, if that makes any sense at all. A lot of games of Nightfall seem to just sort of suddenly end, without much of a sense of crescendo or climax, which is OK on the iPad where you can just rip off several games on the bounce but would be more noticable around a table. On the other hand, I think the chaining mechanic would cause horrible analysis paralysis with certain members of my usual group, both when playing cards but also when buying them.

Another well-implemented card game on the iPhone that ate several evenings after I grabbed it for 69p: Lost Cities. It's got almost no theme at all but it's a really fun little game.

Oh, and a slightly weird example of something that works the other way round, where the physical version is almost less hassle than playing on iOS: Summoner Wars. I love Summoner Wars, but as it currently stands the iOS version is just too slow and fiddly to play it regularly. It's such a shame, it really just needs a bit of spit-and-polish (and especially a bloody "undo last move" button) and it would be absolutely fantastic.

Overwrought Noun! Love it!



Will check out the game you mentioned, as I tend to enjoy the same board and card games that you do.

I made a couple of little treasure chests to hold all of the little gaming pieces for Munchkin Quest, over the weekend.

They are nice little additions to the board and will keep all of the pieces organised. Also, it turns out that one of the readers of my blog happens to be friends with John Kovalic, who does all of the illustrations for the Munchkin/Munchkin Quest games, and has sent the link to my site to him.

Amazing work, well done

Very good!

I really can't get on with Munchkin. At all.

And they are still the greatest thing. Wow.

Mimi you're the best.

TTR Europe turned up. We haven't played it yet, though. Will report back when we do. Perhaps tomorrow night!

Mimi: Very cool, but before I'd opened the link I'd expected you to have knitted something!

Also, to solve the problem of lots of little stuffs in games I have a thousands of really cheap plastic bags of various sizes from Amazon.

You mean drugs, right

Yeah, all of the little pieces came in bags like that, but Russell wanted something a little more permanent, perhaps a little more enjoyable, because there are just so many pieces. Plus, part of the problem was the pieces that you had to draw at random, throughout the game - will be nicer to rummage around a chest ( ) than have them all shuffled around the table, I think.

TTR Europe. What's the deal with the European Express bonus card? I know the person with the longest continuous route gets 10 points, but what does the actual detail on the card represent? What's with the routes? And the numbers? Anyone?

There's little more to it other than a card representing those points. It's pretty much just showing an example of scoring the rule. Black has 19 trains in a route, blue 11, therefore black gets 10 points. Unrelated routes (those two black trains at the top) don't count to the 19.

Aha! Was hoping that was the case. Cheers babe!

<eyebrow raised>

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pandemic-ZMG-71 ... _title_toy

Pandemic available again! New printing! Well, 1-4 weeks available. But still!

Dick. I am 40 train minutes away from york.

Well we'll have to organise something eventually!

SYNCHRONISE CALENDARS AS IT IS NOT LIKE I HAVE HAD SEVEN DAYS SANS BOSS NOW IS IT?

Well I'm not sucking you off if that's what you're thinking.

http://www.playdiplomacy.com/
Any interest in this?

Yes

Yes!

I got King of Tokyo for the Grimlet's Birthday. Monsters smash things up and shit.



I don't get to play it until Sunday, though

very interested

Been feeling very melancholy today so I bought myself this from the game shop on the Cowley Road, and now I feel much happier.

Oh, I played this a few times now.
It's pretty good, although it's over fairly quickly. More health points would have been good, I think.

That's my review on dontdatehimgirl.com

I like the look of this.

It will make an appearance at Cott4ge, fo' sho'.

If I ever book it.

I'm assuming people are still reading Rab's column on RPS (Cardboard Children) - I really enjoyed this weeks

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/04 ... irgrounds/

I now want to play Conquest of Planet Earth.

Me too, it sounds awesome.

Should we have a list for the cottage this year, each person brings a game from the list. I'm happy to buy a game if nobody has it and wants to play it.

Offshore powerboat racing.

You take The Resistance to the cottage thing right? It's soooooo much better than Mafia/Werewolf it's untrue.

Been playing Love Letter recently, it's a game of bluffing, reading people and fun with only 16 cards. It's pretty amazing. About £7.50 and highly recommended. Only plays up to four though.

Hmm, never heard of it but it seems like fun. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work on here too

Never heard of it?! It's amazing. Between us, me and the girlfriend have three versions (1st edition, 2nd edition and 'Avalon')

Any version is well, well, well worth picking up.

Watch this:

That sounds awesome!

Also, apologies for not setting up a diplomacy thingy, i shall do so now.

Right I set up a game called Beex password Beex. It is for 4 people. first come first serve:

Don't think I've ever read his stuff before, thanks for that.

I followed him on Twitter for a while, but he became unbearable whenever anyone would say Frankie Boyle wasn't god.