Member Introductions- Tell us about yourself

Not enough Steven, I'm.glad you came back

Hi

Yeah!!! Boardgames!!!
I'm totally addicted in boardgames at the moment.

Ours videogames genres match perfectly.

You seem like has a lot to do and not much time. But we we nerds are all that way, right?

Something like that, yeah. When you add the fact that I work upwards of 60 hours a week, I don't really have that much free time . Still, its not too bad, I've got internet access at work, and I've got a 3DS for the quiet times.

Also, what board games do you play?

I catch up with a few friends every few weeks on a Friday night. There a few games that we play: Settlers of Catan, Munchkin, the Game of Thrones board game (Its basically Risk in Westeros) and a card game called Man Bites Dog.

The idea of Man Bites Dog is that each player is dealt 5 cards, on each card is a word and a number. The object of the game is to combine the words on the cards into a newspaper headline. The only rule is that the headline needs to make sense grammatically. The numbers on the cards determines how many points you score. Its a great source of stupid fun.

My favourite would have to be the GoT board game. The group I'm in has a few strategy masters, which makes for tense, if somewhat unpredictable matches. I've managed to win a few games and sway the result of a few of the other games.

We've considered playing Diplomacy once or twice, but we decided that we like each other too much to try it (Diplomacy has a reputation of being the game that ends friendships ).

The aim of Munchkin is simple, get your character from level 1 to level 10, by finding loot, equipping gear and beating up monsters. The only problem is the other players .

The game flow is pretty simple, players take turns to "Kick the door down" (draw a "door" card), which will usually result in that player needing to fight a monster. During combat, the other players can help you (for a share of the treasure) or hinder you (by either boosting the monster in question, cursing your character, or by summoning even more monsters). If you win the combat, you gain a level and treasure cards. How much treasure depends on the monster (Defeating 3872 Orcs will grants more treasure than a potted plant, for example). After that takes place, the next player takes their turn. The treasure cards are kept by the player and depending on the card, they can change your character's race, class, equipment or level. They could also be monsters or modifiers for monsters, to be used on other players.

Its an interesting game, but I've only played it a few times, so I'm generally outclassed by the other guys that have played it a lot more than I have.

Its... fun in its own way, I suppose. Its a pretty deep strategy game, so the enjoyment comes more from executing your plans successfully rather than from anything else. (Wall of text inbound!)

Each player controls one of the major factions in the setting. Each faction has a set starting point with a small number of troops. From there, the goal is to capture 7 forts and castles within 10 rounds of combat. At the start of each round, players place order tokens face down on the board (so the other players cannot react to your moves before they come into play). These tokens represent orders for the troops in that area. The different orders are: March orders, Defence orders, Support orders, Raid Orders and Gain Influence orders. Each player has three of each order type, two normal tokens and one marked with a star, which denotes a stronger order, but can only a maximum of three starred orders can be played per round.

March orders allow the troops in that region to move to an adjacent region. If the region is occupied by opposition troops, combat immediately begins. Each march token has a different strength, the two normal tokens are -1 to combat or +0 to combat and the starred order grants a +1 to combat (I'll get to combat in a bit).

Defence orders grant a bonus to the troops in the territory, but the troops cannot move. The two standard tokens give +1 and the starred order gives +2.

Support orders are used to support any combat in any adjacent territory, even if you are not involved in the combat. If you are involved in combat, the support troops are added to your total. If you are not involved, you can declare support for either the attacker or the defender, in which case, your troop value will be added to their total. You can also not get involved at all. Normal orders don't give any benefit and the starred order gives +1.

Raid orders are used to remove certain orders from the board at the start of the round. They're a bit finicky to use, because they need to be adjacent to the territory and land territories cannot raid ocean territories. Normal raid orders can remove support orders and gain influence orders. The starred order can also remove defence orders.

Gain influence tokens only come into play at the end of a round. For every territory that has a gain influence token, you gain a power token, which can be used to hold onto territories if you don't have any forces in them and a few other things, which I'll get into a bit later. The starred order also allows you to muster a limited amount of troops, if the order is placed on a fort or castle.

Once orders have been placed in every occupied territory, the order tokens are turned over and the round commences. Raid orders are resolved first, with each player taking turns, according to turn order. Once the raid orders are resolved, then the movement phase begins. Again, players take turns resolving their march orders one a time, going down the turn order and looping around until there are no more orders. If a player moves troops into an occupied territory, combat takes place.

In a combat action, the aim is to have a higher points total than your opposition. Footmen and boats are worth 1 point each, knights are worth 2 points and siege towers are worth 4 points IF you are attacking a fort or a castle, otherwise they are worthless. Each player plays a house card from their hand face down. The house cards are used to add the number of points on the card to the battle, as well as influence it in a number of ways. They can have swords (As an attacker, if you win, an enemy unit dies), a tower (Prevents one sword from taking effect) or flavour text (depending on the text, it can bolster your units, weaken your opponents or change the map in some way). An additional "Tides of battle" card can also be given to each player, which will give a random benefit of up to +3... or it could do nothing.

For example, My force of 2 knights and a footman (5 points) attacks a territory containing a knight and two footmen (4 points). The march order I used in my territory is a starred order, which grants +1 to attack (6 points) and the opposition territory has a support token, which gives no benefit in this situation (4 points). The house card I play is my "army killer" card, which has 3 points (9 points) and three swords. His house card is a defensive card which has 2 points (6 points) and a tower. My tides of battle card is a +1 (10 points) and my opponents is +3 (9 points). As my 10 points is higher than his 9, I win the combat and 2 of his units die (one of my three swords is cancelled by his tower) and the other unit is routed (it moves to an adjacent unoccupied territory and is unable to take part in any further combat for the round. If there are no unoccupied territories, the unit dies too).

After all of the march orders have been resolved, the gain influence tokens are resolved. Once that happens, all of the order tokens are removed from the board and then round ends. Between rounds, one card is drawn from three decks marked I, II and III. These are global effect cards, which can either be good (every one musters or gains influence), bad (the wildlings attack), change the conditions of play (banning certain order types) or nothing happens.

The wildlings attacking is a global event that happens between turns. They have a strength of anywhere between 2 and 16, and to defeat them, each player bids influence tokens. If the combined total of the tokens is greater than the strength of the wildlings, the players are successful and the player that bid the most gets a bonus. If the combined total is less than the strength of the wildlings, bad things happen to everyone, but the person that bid the least has terrible things happen to them.

After the global event cards have been dealt with, the next round commences.

That's the basics of the flow of the game. There are a few other systems (supply and the influence tracks), but they're kinda difficult to explain without having the board on hand to explain how they work.

As unhelpful as this sounds, it is difficult, but at the same time it isn't. There are a decent number of victory points on the map, so its not like you need to conquer large swathes of the board, but the problem lies in the realisation that most of the required victory points are in the hands of your opponents. Diplomacy is a large part of the game, as it is nearly impossible to win going it alone, as you cannot possibly field enough troops to face down more than two opponents at any one time (And you generally have three opponents that could threaten you on any angle you could think of at any one time). There have been a couple solo victories, but those have been games where there hasn't been a dominant player on the board and the late game turned into a gigantic all-out brawl in the southern area of the map. Those games tend to go to the maximum round count, where the alternate victory conditions come into play. Generally the person that gets the best out of their alliance is the one that will win... Unless I'm allied to one specific player, in which case one of us will backstab the other, usually when we can least afford it.