Pretentious Board Games

On Friday I played another game of Skye Frontier with my dad (also Mike), brother in law (Dave), and nephew (Logan). My dad and nephew play games sometimes, but are not super big into the hobby, and my brother in law is moderately a gamer (he buys games and brings them to my game nights, but he doesn't play all of the newest games). Logan started the game (and picked the blue castle), Dave was white, my dad was yellow, and I was red. My dad and I ended up contending over the lakes, while Dave focused on building mountain regions, and Logan built some of everything. I couldn't get a shipping empire set up because boats were hard to come by, and Logan (and Dave) started grabbing cash at an alarming rate, so I instead focused on building up points using scrolls and by closing regions. With a 1 point per sheep scoring tile out there, we all tried to get sheep, and the build for free action was used a lot. I capped off my regions just in the nick of time, and Dave ended the game (wh...

Alison and I played Automatown with many of the discussed changes last night. We liked some of them, and others we did not. The game ended up ending in 6 rounds, and it took about 80 minutes. The later rounds were longer than the first few rounds. We also were being distracted by kids, so perhaps we could have gone faster. Alison ended up with 7 workers and 9 points while I had 9 workers and 28 points (more about that later). Having fewer types of resources was very good. It made the economy less confusing, and setup and cleanup much faster. The mats worked well, and during the game, we thought of more things to put on them - (the three starting workers can be added here, as well as a reminder of what level is what in terms of dots.) Here is the mat that we played with: We started with 3 scrap, which was not enough given that we were also playing with the rule that made upgrades cost a scrap. In fact, that rule made us strapped for scrap the whole game. We decided that m...

Robin and Lyle form the guild played Automatown with me last night. We used the new goal cards that I just made. Here is how I modified the game: I removed all points from automa, and gave them up to 3 symbols - bullets, hands, and top hats. they can be tapped either for their ability, or to generate a symbol, but you have to place a worker on them to generate a symbol. This automa generates either a hand or a tophat: As an action you can place as many workers as you want on an equal number of automa, and then spend the generated symbols to complete a goal. Goals have from 1 to 4 symbols, and are just worth points. (considering adding abilities to some goals). This goal requires two bullets and a hand. Here is a copy of the notes I made during the game, and a brain dump of thoughts afterward. Most of the notes are comments from the other designers, so they don't necessarily match my thoughts: Recycling station: change to generic level 2 cube symbol. (this would be sim...

I have been doing so many thing recently that I have forgot to write any blog posts. For one thing, I have been playtesting a new game that Seth Jaffe (creator of Eminent Domain and other fine games) is designing. The game is called Automatown, and is about building robots that build more robots for you until you have enough robots to take over the world. For an early prototype it is pretty fun and well balanced. I have had an idea that I have been sitting on for a few years about building snowmen that build more snowmen. This ends up being thematically really similar, but my ideas for mechanics were way different than his. We have played it at work a few times, and the people are interested in seeing his new changes. Being that today is Friday it might end up being a skateboarding day, so perhaps we will not get to play it, but perhaps we will. In terms of my games, I have gotten a few games of The Fatal Flaw in, and also played a game of the Madness Place. I am thinking of givi...