12/5 Featured Games

Hey guys and gals!
This past Friday we had an awesome night of gaming.  We played a few games with animals (as our theme indicated) and a few games without.  We got in a game of Smash Up, Lords of Waterdeep, Caverna, Robinson Crusoe, and Splendor.  I'm pretty sure an excellent time was had by all thirteen people, including our two newcomers Kevin and Clayton.

Next Friday marks an exciting day for us at FND.  It will be my wife's first day back since the birth of our son, Grady!  As such, since I'm in charge of this blog and the featured games, I'm going to be a bit selfish and have our next session's theme be "Games that Beth loves!"  I told her this recently and she responded "But then I won't be able to choose what to play!"  That's an excellent problem, my dear.

So, without further jibber jabbering, here's the games:

Splendor

Splendor is super popular right now in the gaming community and our game group is no different.  I think FND has had it played each session for the past three or four sessions.  My BGG list of games played had Ticket to Ride easily at the top for the year 2014.  In two months of owning Splendor it has soared above it, due largely to Beth's unfailing love for it.  It is a very easy game.  You take gems.  You buy things with gems.  Those things let you buy more things.  You get points.  You win.  It takes like 20 minutes but its pretty fun.


Carcassone

Carcassone is a classic tile laying game.  It's kind of like Dominoes but fun.  You get points based on how you place your meeples and the tiles each turn, creating cities and fields and roads and farms.  It's really simple and is really fun.  We have the Big Box so we have a boatload of expansions and can play up to six (I think, maybe seven).


Castles of Burgundy

Castles of Burgundy by good old Stefan Feld is a very highly regarded game by Beth and most gamers.  It is very 'elegant' for lack of a better word - on each turn you roll two dice and those basically decide your options you can take.  You're 14th century nobleman in France building up your land.  Honestly the theme is pretty lightly involved, but it is a very enjoyable game of taking efficient actions and building your estate.

Trajan

While we're listing Stefan Feld games, Beth also very much enjoys his game called Trajan.  Trajan takes the mechanisms found in Mancala and turns it into a way of taking actions.  Each turn you move little pieces around your roundel just like in mancala at whichever one you end on that's the action you take.  Now, I suspect when Five Tribes arrives at our house hold (the newest game by Days of Wonder) Trajan will go down a bit as it uses a similar mechanic in a bit lighter of a way, but nonetheless right now Beth really enjoys Trajan.


Ticket to Ride

Beth, like every other human being, enjoys Ticket to Ride - particularly on our fancy 10th Anniversary Edition.  Trains.  Tickets.  Pretty maps.  I don't think I need to explain Ticket to Ride much more than that.

Escape: Curse of the Temple

We literally just got this game, however we played it three times in a row just the two of us the first night - which is impressive because we don't play a lot of games two player.  This game occurs in real time (exactly 10 minutes long) and you are trying to escape a temple (picture Indiana Jones) before it caves in on you.  You are frantically rolling dice as fast as you can in order to get the necessary symbols to secure the required number of power gems needed to escape.  Curses can come up that prevent you from talking, make you lose dice that fall on the floor, and all sorts of other crazy things.  It is super fun and fast and frantic.


Kingsburg

Kingsburg is a dice rolling game somewhat similar to Castles of Burgundy.  You use your dice to influence various advisers, thus getting resources, which you can use to build up your little empires defenses and infrastructure.  It's really simple and it is really enjoyable - I don't think anyone's ever played it with me and not had a good time.  Beth, of course, enjoys it too.

Ultimate Werewolf

And finally we couldn't have a game night dedicated to what Beth enjoys without it also including a chance for her to lie and betray all of her friends.  So we'll play werewolf at some point.  If you're new and have never played, essentially you lie to your friends about whether you're a werewolf or a villager and try to get them killed.  It's fun.

So, those are all of the games we'll be playing next Friday!  I hope to see everybody out!  Even though they're games Beth enjoys, I think overall they're games the majority of FND enjoys, too.  I will update this again if I a 'reminded' of any games I forgot :-)

Blessings!

11/21 Featured Games

Hi everybody!

Tomorrow (November 21st) FND will be hosting its regularly scheduled game night!
We will be featuring (per my beautiful wife's suggestion) games that involves ANIMALS!
What could be more fun, right?  I mean, look at those two cutiepies to the right.  Okay, so in most of the games you'll end up turning them into lambchops and bacon, but they're cute while they last, right?

Anyways, the games we'll be playing are a fleet of highly regarded games that haven't seen much table-time at FND yet so I'm quite excited.  Let's look at 'em!

Agricola/Caverna

Both of these games, Agircola and Caverna, are by very highly regarded designer Uwe Rosenburg.  In Agricola you're normal 14th century peasants trying to raise a farm.  In Caverna you're dwarf adventurers.... trying to raise a farm.  Caverna is essentially Agricola's sequal and they're quite similar.  Personally I like them both a great deal and I've heard good reasons for preferring either over the other.  Either way, these are some of the best games the hobby has to offer - both are in BGG's top 10 with Agricola taking the top spot for a spell a few years back (it has since been dethroned).

In these games you're trying to successfully raise a farm - it sounds boring, but it's quite fun as there are tons of things to do and never quite enough time to do them.  Most importantly for our theme's sake, part of this means raising a whole host of animals!  Doggies, sheepies, piggies, cowies, donkeyies.... Yeah, you end up eating them sometimes, but sometimes you don't!  Yay!

Evolution

Evolution is a brand new release by North Star Games and involves players guiding the evolution of various species and trying to come out with the most flourishing animals.  You develop different
traits, making hunters, herbivores, scavengers, and all sorts of different creatures.  North Star did a wonderful job with the components and I own the Kickstarter version so I have some different cards and fancier player board AND a fancy plastic brontosaurus so what more could you want?

Dungeon Petz

Dungeon Petz has been featured before but is yet to actually be played.  It is a rather amusingly themed game where players are taking control of a pet store.  The pet stores don't have puppies and kittens, however... They raise monsters and creatures used by the villains who run dungeons.  So you m
ay be raising a dragon or a gollum or any other kind of creature with more eyes than legs.  For being such a light-hearted theme it's actually a somewhat complex game but it is great fun.  I've really enjoyed it each time I've played and not just because there are cubes that represent animal poop, though admittedly that's part of it.

Takenoko

Takenoko is a very light game that is great for new gamers or people who want something not super heavy.  In it you are simply a bamboo farmer trying to please the Japanese Emperor.  There's a big painted panda trying to eat your bamboo.  He's cute.  He's panda-y.  Its nothing super complex but the art is absolutely gorgeous and it is a pretty fun little game.

Robinson Crusoe

This one somewhat loosely involves animals, but its an AMAZING game and we're still yet to play it at FND so I'm sticking it on here more out of stubborness than anything else.  Players are stranded on an island (where they have to eat animals and not be eaten by animals - see that loose connection to the theme?) where they must survive.  It's a coop
erative game that is brilliantly thematic and, again, one of the best board games in existance. 

I think that's all of the animal games we'll be bringing, but others are certainly welcome to bring some - particularly games like Dominant Species, Zooloretto, and more.

11/7 Featured Games

Hello everyone!

This past Friday we had a great time on Halloween playing some spooky themed games.  We played Dead of Winter, Fearful Floors, Werewolf, and Shadow Hunters - as well as some other not so spooky games like Splendor and The Resistance: Avalon.  We had a great time and are excited that this upcoming Friday on November 7 we will be having our next event.

What are the featured games of this upcoming session?  They are games based on Movies, TV shows and/or Books!

Now, a lot of games could fit this genre and most of them are bad.  Thankfully in the era of modern board games we have a plethora of great games that use popular licenses whereas not too long ago this would have been a series of "Star Wars Trivial Pursuit" and "Lord of the Rings Monopoly."  While I'm sure there are folks who love those kinds of games (and there's nothing wrong with that), this upcoming Friday we'll be playing some with a bit more substance.

Sooooo let's see what they are!

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island


I think we've featured this game at least two or three times thus far and are yet to actually get a game of it in. I'm hoping that changes as this is one of the best cooperatives games available.  It is based on the theme of surviving on a stranded island and features scenarios that are taken from Robinson Crusoe as well as the Swiss Family Robinson.  I haven't read either book so I'm not sure how similar the game is to the books, but the game itself is one of my favorites.  It is moderately complex and is a very challenging game - a group of newbies will probably lose their first game.  Seriously, if you haven't played this yet - you should.

War of the Ring/The Battle of Five Armies

I couldn't have this theme and not feature my favorite game and its new cousin.  War of the Ring has been out for some time and is based off of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (to be clear, the books - NOT the movies).  It is beautiful and very much captures the essence of those novels - which is a great deal of why I love it.  It is not a game that is looking to make a few extra bucks by slapping a picture of Orlando Bloom on the cover - it is made by people who love Tolkien's work and put it into game form.  Recently Ares Games released a new game in the same design called The Battle of Five Armies, which recreates the final conflict in The Hobbit.  I got this on release but haven't played it yet - the goal is to know it for Friday.  Battle of Five Armies is strictly 2-player and War of the Ring is best with 2 but can technically hold 4.  Again, I'd love to teach this to some folks!

A Game of Thrones: 2nd Edition

Obviously, this game is based on novels by George R.R. Martin in his A Song of Fire and Ice.  I have not read the books and know little about the HBO series so a lot of the theme as it relates to the book is lost on me, however this game is very highly regarded.  I just received it in a trade and haven't played it myself to give a genuine opinion, but it looks awesome - it is all about political maneuvering matched with strategic wits.  Back-stabbing? Check.  Armies? Check.  It has gorgeous components and the map looks great.  This should be a lot of fun, especially if we can get the full 6 people to play.

Battlestar Galactica

Again, we've featured this before at FND and I think it is probably one of our group's favorites - it's certainly one of mine.  Now in our collection we have both the Pegasus Expansion and the Exodus Expansion.  If we play this I am hoping we will do so with 5-6 players as well as a variant ending - whether it be using the New Caprica variant found in the Exodus expansion or the Ionian Nebula variant found in the exodus expansion.  If you haven't played it before, in my opinion this game is still the quintessential
semi-cooperative game.  Everyone's on a team - except the hidden Cylon traitor.  This game perfectly captures the spirit of the television show and couples it with very strong mechanics.

Star Wars: X-Wing

And finally we have our only one actually based off a specific movie and not a book that goes with it - Star Wars: X-Wing.  Now, in a few months we will probably have a specific Star Wars day when Star Wars: Imperial Assault and Star Wars: Armada get released because they both look amazing and I simply cannot resist the temptation to give Fantasy Flight more of my money.  X-Wing is currently out with many many expansions.  It's technically two players but one can play with more by splitting up ships in each fleet.  This is a tactical minis game where players control different ships from the Star Wars universe.  I have the base game (with an x-wing and two ties), the tie bomber, a-wing, and Millenium Falcon expansions.  This allows for a pretty fun mashing of ships and some cool scenarios.

Given the theme of the week it's not surprising to find a lot of "Amerithrash" styled games in the lineup.  If that's not your cup of tea we'll have the normal library out and available as well.

We at FND are hoping to see everyone out to play these awesome games!  Bring some friends and we'll see you Friday!