The Boardgames Thread / Board games

Picked up Samurai Spirit today. nice simple game built around a blackjack-esque mechanism, samurai have to defend a village from bandits, each samurai takes turns drawing a card off the bandit deck, you then either place it in one of three defend slots which have to be filled before the attack on the village at the end of the round or penalties occur or you add it to your attack line and try to accumulate points to trigger your special ability (if you go over you are out of the round). once either all players are out or all of the bandit cards have been played then the village assault happens, barricades and farms are burned and families attacked. if at least one farm and one family are standing at the end, you add more powerful bandits to the deck and go again and you win if you survive the 3rd and final round assault.

i played it solo running 4 characters and failed miserably the first time but on the second game i'd got the hang of the strategy and managed to squeak a win.

you kind of need to play a round for it all to make sense but it is quite an easy game to pick up and plays fairly quickly. there's not a ton of stuff in the box but all looks great and works well.

SUSD review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNyp-XV26zg

I paid £20 but Leisure Games have it for £13.50 on their website...
https://leisuregames.com/products/samurai-spirit

Oliver and I will be at Proceed Clockwise from 6pm on Tuesday 16th April. If anyone is interested, please come down.

Lebowski and I had a lovely evening tonight, playing Alhambra, which well justified its GotY win in 2003. It ended in a tie, which was unexpected. We're hoping to meet up again in May.

When did this thread get so busy! Great to hear. Boardgames ahoy!

I'm based in Hackney with this collection if anyone wants to play. Happy to cycle anywhere too. I also go the London on Board meetups.

@HatBeard Mate been too long, loving hearing you're into teh Arkham LCG, let's have a game sometime.

Anyone going to the Uk Games Expo? Let me know, I'm there all days, I'm shooting for them.

Arkham LCG, let's have a game sometime.

Absolutely. my AH stuff is all down at my mums but I'll give you a shout and can bring it back up with me as needed would be good opportunity to try the standalone campaigns but I have the full run so we can pick whatever.

Sweet. Nice one.

When did this thread get so busy!

Where has this forum been all your life? :)

Suggestions for dates in May at Proceed Clockwise?

Should we do a Tuesday again?

After a lot of dithering I finally pulled the trigger and bought Gloomhaven. What a monster; you do not want to drop the box on your foot. Still working my way through the manual but very exited about this purchase!

it's great, I'm almost never at home in London these days so never get to play but it's still one of my faves.

my one non-spoiler'y tip for starting out is pay attention to donating to receive blessings when in town, I recommend doing so whenever you have the gold early on as the blessing cards will help a bunch.

I don't use it myself but apparently the gloomhaven helper app/website is very good for reducing the mess on the table as it handles all the monster cards/hit points for you.

and finally a storage organiser will improve your enjoyment of the game a hundredfold as the setup and teardown times can be brutal without it.

Nice, thanks for the tips!

I can second what @HatBeard said. Great fun though.

Is anyone interested in taking Escape from Colditz from me? It's an old old game - I used to play it with my dad when I was young, and that is a long time ago.

Brief synopsis here - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/715/escape-colditz

I'm in E10 and would gladly swap it for a beer

^ That's a great game. Last time I played one of the players got stuck on the prison roof.

Anyone at the UK Games Expo this weekend?

Is anyone here into Warhammer?
My son is interested in it but I have no idea where to start.
He keeps going on about Death Guards. I watched some introductory videos on youtube abd it looks like a 40,000 starter set is the place to begin + some sort of paint beginners set.
Anything else I should know.
I don't really get how all the millions of different models you can collect fit into the game. I'm guessing all will become clear once we play.

I was a bit into it when I was 10. It's an amazingly deep and intricate universe.

The painting is fun too. Get your drybrushing game up.

Wait til you see a d50 for the first time.

You can play the game without shelling out £££ for the models. Just use any other marker.

Admittedly you have to stretch the imagination to believe that your green army men are Chaos Juggernauts, but it might be a good idea to try before you buy as the army sets are pricey.

Recommendations for games for 9.5yos?

We have othello, chess, bananagrams, exploding kittens, rummikub

Carcassonne, Settlers, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic?

Ticket to Ride

Yes, Ticket to Ride works very well at that age.

Settlers

I'm sure they'll be able to grow into it, but I'd think this would be a bit of a steep learning curve. Also, they've removed 'settlers' from the title for political reasons; it's only called 'Catan' now.

Carcassonne would work very well at that age, although not yet with loads of expansion sets, but I suppose the kids would grow into that, as well. The first couple of expansion sets are essential for the game, anyway, I think.

Good suggestions all the same.

The first couple of expansion sets are essential for the game, anyway, I think.

Which ones are those? I think we've just got the basic set (well, with the river 'expansion' that came in the box).

My older son is getting into Warhammer, which is cool.
The trouble is our little one now wants it too. He's only 6.
Is there anything out there that is suitable for younger kids, where you paint miniatures and play a game?

zombicide might be ok.

if hes playing sigmar, get warcry... handful of models and just abridge the rules. 40k.... kill team and similarly cut the rules. Simplify them as much as you need.
There tons of games like them but the joy comes with building/painting the models and the 6yr old will want to play your older son and with abridged rules you can let them fight each other to their hearts content.