Board Gamers, show us your loot! (3 Viewers)

Has anyone following ever participated in protospiel ? I went once and plan to go this year at some location. Protospiel is an event where game designers play test their games (which are at various stages of development) with play testers. It's like a game convention for games in development. When I went two years ago, I think I paid $3 at the door to get in. Game designers teach their game to you and after you play it with other play testers, you give feedback. If you love board games, this is really a great way to see the process and think about mechanics, etc.
 
Has anyone following ever participated in protospiel ? I went once and plan to go this year at some location. Protospiel is an event where game designers play test their games (which are at various stages of development) with play testers. It's like a game convention for games in development. When I went two years ago, I think I paid $3 at the door to get in. Game designers teach their game to you and after you play it with other play testers, you give feedback. If you love board games, this is really a great way to see the process and think about mechanics, etc.
I've done a lot of playtesting over the years. I would be extremely wary of game designers that didn't have big enough of a base to adequately playtest a game.

#ShitSandwich - yes that was actually a game I was asked to playtest. no, it did not make it to production.
 
Has anyone following ever participated in protospiel ? I went once and plan to go this year at some location. Protospiel is an event where game designers play test their games (which are at various stages of development) with play testers. It's like a game convention for games in development. When I went two years ago, I think I paid $3 at the door to get in. Game designers teach their game to you and after you play it with other play testers, you give feedback. If you love board games, this is really a great way to see the process and think about mechanics, etc.
In St. Louis, MO, a local publisher (Stonemaier) runs this type of event every year or so.
 
Very happy with the collection. Favorite BY A MILE is The Thing, but Coup and Betrayal are way up there too.
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We love Dominion at our house. We've also played every form of Pandemic, but our favorites are the legacy versions. We like to go to game conventions or support kickstarter so we can get extra bling. Other favorites: Terraforming Mars, Scythe, Wingspan, Everdell, and Tiny Towns. I played Camp Grizzly at a convention I ran and had to get it (it never went to print). The game play is ok, but it makes me nostalgic.

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I have been eyeing The Thing. What's the mechanic? I haven't had much luck with horror-themed games (H.H. Holmes is just ok; Night Cage is not great; Horrified is ok.)
Fantastic.
Not sure if you've seen the movie, pretty faithful:

Team of scientists and support staff have to clear the station and leave via helicopter. One or more of them are actually an alien, but no one knows who they are, aliens don't know who other aliens are. Survivors want to survive until the helicopter then escape on the copter. Aliens want to either 1. fail enough rooms and challenges so that the station burns down, or 2. escape with the good guys on the helicopter to copy the world.


Take turns being captain, captain picks who comes with you to clear rooms to kill aliens and gain supplies to leave. Everyone hands in a card, shuffled, then check; some may be sabotaged or just wrong.

Overall very fun game. For people who rarely play board games, they can pick it up pretty quickly as long as there's a decent table captain teaching them how to play. I'd advise it.
 
Fantastic.
Not sure if you've seen the movie, pretty faithful:

Team of scientists and support staff have to clear the station and leave via helicopter. One or more of them are actually an alien, but no one knows who they are, aliens don't know who other aliens are. Survivors want to survive until the helicopter then escape on the copter. Aliens want to either 1. fail enough rooms and challenges so that the station burns down, or 2. escape with the good guys on the helicopter to copy the world.


Take turns being captain, captain picks who comes with you to clear rooms to kill aliens and gain supplies to leave. Everyone hands in a card, shuffled, then check; some may be sabotaged or just wrong.

Overall very fun game. For people who rarely play board games, they can pick it up pretty quickly as long as there's a decent table captain teaching them how to play. I'd advise it.
This sounds amazing. What's the fewest people you would play it with?

I've only seen the Kurt Russell version of the movie, but it's one of my all-time favorites. I'm waiting for my son (13) to be old enough to watch that and Alien(s) with me.

Thank you! I've been looking for a game to pine over.
 
This sounds amazing. What's the fewest people you would play it with?

I've only seen the Kurt Russell version of the movie, but it's one of my all-time favorites. I'm waiting for my son (13) to be old enough to watch that and Alien(s) with me.

Thank you! I've been looking for a game to pine over.
Comes with figurines of the characters from those movies! Includes the gun, flamethrower, dynamite, blood testing. Very well done, impressed by it.

Honestly, I have the most fun 6-8. You can play it with 4 but that makes it very tough even playing optimally, and much simpler gameplay. 5 is on the fence, 6-8 is a blast.

Edit to add: not commenting on your parenting but 13 is fine! Most 13 year olds will laugh at the special effects that are no longer so special lol.
 
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I just pulled down Settlers of Catan (including the 5-6 player expansion, the Seafarer's expansion and the 5-6 player Seafarer's expansion sets) to send off with my son as he moves to his new apartment this weekend. And I grabbed Robo Rally as well. Haven't played this game in a long time. I have the WoC 2nd edition that still had the metal figurines. I painted them myself almost 25 years ago. Still look pretty decent. I'll be sending this game off with him as well (including the Armed & Dangerous, Crash & Burn and Grand Prix expansion sets). I hope they actually play them.

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I just pulled down Settlers of Catan (including the 5-6 player expansion, the Seafarer's expansion and the 5-6 player Seafarer's expansion sets) to send off with my son as he moves to his new apartment this weekend. And I grabbed Robo Rally as well. Haven't played this game in a long time. I have the WoC 2nd edition that still had the metal figurines. I painted them myself almost 25 years ago. Still look pretty decent. I'll be sending this game off with him as well (including the Armed & Dangerous, Crash & Burn and Grand Prix expansion sets). I hope they actually play them.

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Oh the metal mechs are awesome!
 
Fyi, regardless of the game, we use our own pieces. At one point I used a little emperor Palpatine for everything. Hehe
 
This is the bulk of my current collection:
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I tend to *mostly* collect games I've played an know I really like, but of these Age of Steam, Moonrakers and Pax Pamir (2nd ed) are probably some of my all time favorite games.

Also, I recently got all the expansions for sagrada, and had to put together a custom foam core insert for it to fit everything in the base box because I hate having to have four boxes for a single game. Just barely fits all the expansions including sleeved cards. Eventually would love to get this made of lasercut wood or something, but for now this'll do and I'm quite happy with it.
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Have been super busy with biz lately and did not manage to keep updates here. :(

Anyway was back from our annual Essen Spiel trip 2 weeks back - this is our 10th Essen Spiel! A record 190k attendees and over 1,500 new games!!

Here's our shot at the Days of Wonder booth where they released their Legacy system for TTR -> Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West!!

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So I don't buy new board games that often anymore. Combination of playing eat more poker and just getting to that point where most new board games all feel the same. So I'm very careful with what I buy. I did go ahead and buy Nucleum as I like the designers and Brass, which Nucleum takes inspiration from (and to a lesser extent Barrage). It's a good game, but it is NOT Brass.

It's much less interactive, and has none of the thing I think makes Brass so interesting, which is shared resources and scoring. Brass is so tough and interesting because you want people to use your stuff. But there is basically none of that in Nucleum.

Nucleum also has what amounts to variable player powers. Which I've come to not like all that much because they often force you into doing a particular thing instead finding a natural strategy based on how the game is going.

That said, it has enough interesting stuff going on that I do still enjoy it. And given that I don't actually own Brass or Barrage, it fills a bit of a niche.

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Our traditional annual TWILIGHT XMAS where we get-together for a session of TI3 (yup we are those still staying with TI3 in spite of the onslaught of TI4 haha). We do the full set (both XPs) plus a series of house rules (mostly from the Miles High HR).

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Wife and I played two games of Lost a Ruins of Armak and two games of Robinson Crusoe this weekend. We split wins in Armak. And went 1-1 in Crusoe. So obviously we cheated somehow in Crusoe because people don't win at that game.

I proceeded to order the new expansion for Armak, Earth, extra maps for Arc Nova, and finally rectified me not owning Coloretto.
 
Haven't played OG 7 Wonders in so many years, but man was it a staple in the rotation for a long time. What a classic. Makes me nostalgic just looking at that!
Hi, can you please check your direct messages? thanks :)
 
Invited to game day and told to bring my own! Wooo! Excellent!


Tragedy strikes: wife sends me to the car to pick something up for her just as they're deciding what game to play. I come back and we're playing a simple one already. Okay. Second game, someone else says Catchphrase so we play a few rounds of Catchphrase. Fine.

Then I get asked what games I brought! I introduce all 5 games, with the last being Codenames. New friend shouts CODENAMES! And then she says she feels like I introduced them in the order of which I wanted to play them and laughed. She was right. We played Codenames, and I put Last Friday, The Thing, Coup, and Betrayal at the House on the Hill back in the car.

 
Got in a play of Earth and the Fox Experiment on Sunday.

One person complained the whole game of Earth about how badly he was doing and ended up coming in second.

The best thing about Fox experiment is getting to name the pups and rolling an obnoxious amount of dice. I love rolling lots of dice.
 
Got in a play of Earth and the Fox Experiment on Sunday.

One person complained the whole game of Earth about how badly he was doing and ended up coming in second.

The best thing about Fox experiment is getting to name the pups and rolling an obnoxious amount of dice. I love rolling lots of dice.
My wife and I really like Earth. I know it was some big hit when it came out, and now it seems to have cooled significantly. But I think it's great at what it's trying to do. Sometimes you get owned by the randomness. But some of my favorite genres are ones where you try to make it work with the randomness you get.

Last Friday, The Thing, Coup, and Betrayal at the House
I'm not sure you could have named 4 other games in the same sentence I want to play less than those. I own Betrayal because my wife likes it. The only co-op I've ever enjoyed to any serious degree is Robinson Crusoe. With a honorable mention to Mansions of Madness 2nd Ed. I guess I like ones where everything constantly goes badly.

It's a me thing though. I want the intellectual challenge. Not a group activity.
 

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