Forum: Public Forum

I feel like bringing Cuba.
Any objection or preference?

Laurent,

Dear all,

After talking to Andrew on Friday, I will bring:

• Cuba.
• Pandemic.

If you have a request or comment, please post in this thread.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

Game.

A good game of Cuba: El Presidente yesterday, won, at long last, by Andrew with the "water strategy".

With a slightly complex game such as this one, it is easy to mess things up a bit:

• I vaguely remembered reading something about the "Harbour Act". This is discussed in this thread where nit-picking pedants seem to argue endlessly. From what I have gathered, when the act is passed, no full ship should leave immediately. The next ship to be filled is the one that leaves, then triggering the others moving down until all docks are busy.

We made the mistake of moving ships once too many.

• I think we got the use of the lighthouse right. Again a lot of discussions on that at Boardgamegeek.com. Basically the player looks for a ship, then swaps it with the one at sea so as to have preferential shipping during the next round. "Swapping" means swapping only the two cards, not reordering the all pile, neither does it call for a reshuffling either. Although the reshuffling issue is moot if the lighthouse owner uses it for all remaining turns (thus selecting the desired ship every time).
• I assume we got the "up to" signs on the tiles right. A plain green arrow means "as many as one wants" (example: rum factory can change as many sugar canes to rum as desired per activation) and a green arrow with a multiplier means "up to that number of times" (example: golf course can change up to four water for one victory point each, so up to four VP per turn with four water cubes).

Extra tiles for Cuba.

The Board-game geek website has pictures for extra tiles from the various special editions or limited editions of the game. I will try to print these buildings to scale and stick them on card-board tiles for the next time we play Cuba.

Next game.

We can try playing Tannhäuser at the suggestion of Andrew. By the way, which version of Settlers of Catan do you have? I could add it to the Board-game page.

Laurent,

Fellow gamers,

A new event has been set-up for tonight (Thursday, September 23rd) to replace David's cancelled Pathfinder RPG game.

Also added is a board-game event for October 3rd.

Laurent,

I forgot to say that I will bring the following games for tonight:

• Jerusalem.
• Pandemic.

With a preference for Jerusalem from Ian, Andrew and myself as we discussed last night.
We have played this game only once quite a while ago, but like Cuba this should be interesting once we master the rules a bit better.

If anyone objects and has something else in mind, please bring your game or ask for something specific to be played.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

Jerusalem.

Interesting game of Jerusalem yesterday, as expected won by David who was new to the game. This time we played it the right way and our final towers were not too dissimilar.

For those interested, the PDF of the rules can be found on the official site for the game on this link. The website itself being there. This is an Italian game, so if you do not speak Berlusconian, you may have some problems. The PDF link is the English version though.

Braggart.

Great game, simple and funny. I would be interested with a copy of possible.

Next session.

So, what shall we play for the next Monday session?
Should we try Tannhäuser?

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

The event has not been changed to "Babylon 5" for tonight, so we can safely assume that the board-game session is on.

From what we discussed last time, Tannhäuser should be on.

Laurent,

Fellow Tannhäuser would-be players,

I have easily found the rules, just go here.
The rule booklet is there as well as an FAQ.

Note that there seem to be a lot of expansions and variant rules, as if the basic game was not difficult enough!

For those who were not there:

• We tried to play Tannhäuser then we gave-up.
• We then played a couple of games of Citadel.
• ... and finished with Braggart.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

Board-game Geek is the place to go indeed for questions about a board-game. They have forums dedicated to each game and said forums are also subdivided into "rule", "general", "reviews", etc.

I have printed the PDF for the Tannhäuser yesterday and read through it. It is indeed a very interesting game and once one reads the rulebook, things begin to make sense. What does not help at all is that the rulebook is designed for the game franchise and not the original board only - the one we have at Vague Connections- this means that the number of objectives they mention in the set-up phase is not the same as is available on the board. This is to the extent that the examples given in the rule-book just cannot work as stated!
Many people seem to have been confused by that and others have provided helpful answers on the aforementioned forums.

Another way to look at the stupendous amount of counters in the original box is to see them as being useful for game expansions, namely additional boards. Because with the original board, only three objectives token per side (for a total of six... and not eight as given in the example) can be put on the board, and only... TWO crates, despite having a crap load of those in the box!

It would be nice to try to play this again on the next Monday dedicated to board-games.
It is a "two teams" game, so the 2-10 players sticker on the back of the box is misleading. If we end up only with three players at the next session, one of us would have to have a two character team (one hero, one grunt per side).

Oh, and by the way, the rulebook has been translated to English, and from the names of the people who designed the game, this is very likely a French game.
(Quick use of Bing.fr) Yep, it was a French company that developed it, but it went belly-up and Fantasy Flight Games has taken over the franchise now.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

I will not be able to make it on Monday October 31st, sorry.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

I forgot to report that on Monday we played a five-player game of Blood Bowl Team Manager. This time with the right rules and all the way through the entire "season".

The slimy Skavens won relatively easily by losing matches...

I will not be playing next week, but the event is on the calendar for you to sign-up to.

Laurent,

Fellow Board-gamers,

On Monday we shall play The Settlers of Catan.

As usual, new players are welcome.

Laurent,

and a very excellent game it is too

Alan,

What are you doing on MY thread?

For once I was happy just blabbering by myself and you jut had to drop a line!

Settlers of Catan.

Or Die Siedler von Catan as the soon to be EU overlords would say, is indeed a good game. I had heard of it a lot, but never got to play it. I won my very first game ever! Then the dice stopped liking me.
We played the basic/original/plain vanilla game.

Next week's offering.

As mentioned on Monday, Tim is going to bring Yggdrasil. Although it seems to be all about Norse gods, the game is suspiciously French...

Gaming group expansion.

Our Monday gathering of four to five usually only lead to one game being played, but we had a little crowd last time and an additional game of Zombies was played.

As usual, everyone is welcome.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

I have put a session up for Monday (December 5th), which I will not be able to attend.

Also entered a session for Monday, December 12th. Barring adverse condition, I shall be able to show-up at that one.

Please discuss here what you plan on doing this coming Monday and the next.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

I shall be showing-up tomorrow.

Seeing that nobody has decided anything, I will probably bring a game of Pandemic or play whatever is on offer.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

A good night of board-gaming overall beginning with an uncontested victory at Settlers of Catan, the result of team work with Andrew laying out the original game and I masterfully expanding the settlement.

Then we played Pandemic with the On the Brink expansion. The first game was an easy one with only four epidemic cards, lulling the new players (Matt and Dan) into a false sense of "Yeah, interesting and easy..." attitude.
Then of course we played the game like real men, with five "virulent strain" cards and the "mutation" option together. We lost repeatedly but came extremely close to solving one game, missing only one black city card while running out of player's card.
Fun was had by all involved.

Not sure yet what we will be playing next week, but it shall be a board-game session again.

Those interested to join us can have a look at our wiki page and look at what can be played.

Laurent,

Right. Since my Thursday game has ended I can spare some time on Mondays for some gaming. If there's space, I'll be along on monday.

Have you played Arkham Horror yet?

Ding

David,

Nope, there is no "official" game selection for the next session. We could discuss this on Wednesday at the Rise of the Runelords game.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

Next session shall see Arkham Horror being played.

Hopefully someone will come early to help with the ludicrously long set-up.

Laurent,