board games Archives - Page 15 of 18 -

Fourth of July binge-gaming

By Meeple Lady | July 6, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

My friends and I decided to do a marathon 2 days of board gaming for July 3 and 4. I haven’t done that much non-stop board gaming since I went to BGG Con. We hunkered down for two days at my friend’s house, complete with 2 medium-sized dogs running around beneath the gaming table, and played some pretty epic heavy games.

We all arrived at 1 p.m. on Friday and first up on the agenda was Fief 1429 France. Oh, Fief … The last time we played Fief, a really tense fight broke out between my friends over one guy telling a new-ish player what do to, which was really to his advantage, and other players got really mad because then it was tipping the scale over game play. So I thought we weren’t going to play that for a while, but, two weeks later, here we are. They rationalized that they wanted to play it again because we now had 6 players, instead of 5 during that game we don’t speak of anymore.

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My top 9 board games

By Meeple Lady | June 23, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

The user @theboardgeek started this hashtag #mytop9boardgames a few days ago on Instagram, and I decided to jump on it and create my own photo grid. I hadn’t actually thought to write down my list in a while. There are just so many games out there! And of course, as you get deeper into the hobby, your tastes and preferences change. If you check out the list, I totally love heavy, crunchy games.

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Bohnanza: Let’s go farm some beans!

By Meeple Lady | June 18, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

I swear I must’ve been a farmer in a previous life because a few of my favorite board games deal with farming. Games such as Agricola, Scoville and Bohnanza. Or maybe I’m just so head over heels over rock-star-game-designer-extraordinaire Uwe Rosenberg that if he loves farming, then so do I! Fun fact: the title of the game is a play on the word bean in German, which is bohne. And all the beans have funny little personalities from the cool artwork.

Bohnanza is Rosenberg’s first game, way back in 1997. That’s pretty ancient in the board-game world. The version I have, published by Rio Grande Games, game out in 2000. In the small print on the rule book, the Rio Grande email address is still an aol account. Hee hee, how times have changed since this was published! Bohnanza plays 2-7 players and lasts about 45 minutes. The goal of the game is for each player to plant beans in 2 or 3 bean fields and try to sell them for the most money. The player with the most money after 3 rounds wins the game.

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Milton Bradley’s Shogun: The game with many names

By Meeple Lady | June 11, 2015 | Comments 16 comments

A few years back, I purchased a used copy of Shogun, the Milton Bradley version from the 1980s. It was recommended to me by a friend who had said that the game was way better than Axis and Allies, another Milton Bradley game from that era that I also owned. At the time, Axis and Allies had been the longest and most complicated game I had played (this was in my early stages of the hobby), and when I saw a pretty decent used copy of Shogun a few days after the recommendation, I snatched it up right away. And then it sat on my bookcase for years …

That is, until last weekend. I finally rallied 4 other players to tackle this game with me, and we set the date to play. We all looked up the rules online so that we would be ready for combat on game day. Of the 5 of us, there were two of us who hadn’t played it before, one of them being me. We all laughed that for such an old game, many of us still had a version of this Milton Bradley gem. The game, originally called Shogun, changed into Samurai Swords during a re-release in 1995, and was renamed Ikusa during the 2011 re-release under a different company.

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The time I totally geeked out at Phoenix Comicon

By Meeple Lady | June 4, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

Edward James Olmos (from left), me, Katee Sackhoff and Mary McDonnell. Admiral Adama, Starbuck and President Roslin. Squee! — Edward James Olmos (from left), me, Katee Sackhoff and Mary McDonnell, aka Admiral Adama, Starbuck and President Roslin. Squeee! They were all super nice and had great panels, too!

OMG, guys. The photo above is seriously the most epic and nerdtastic photo I have ever taken.

I’ve been going to Phoenix Comicon religiously for the past few years, and even attended when it was a much smaller event in a neighboring city about 7 years ago (when it wasn’t yet quite glorious). When I first heard that all three top actors from Battlestar Galactica were going to be at this year’s event, I couldn’t resist paying for a photo op with all of them. And of course, I had to hold up Battlestar Galactica the board game. All three of the actors I’m in the photo with are pictured on the box! I love the show, and the board game is one of my favorites as well. The game thematically captures the essence of the show, the intrigue, paranoia and not knowing if your friend is a cylon!

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Get your peppers in Scoville!

By Meeple Lady | May 21, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

Wilbur Scoville in 1912 developed the Scoville test, which is still used today to measure the heat of chili peppers. And according to the Scoville board game, the town of Scoville was founded in honor of Wilbur Scoville. Each year the residents gather to host the Chili Pepper Festival, and the grower who plants and breeds the most heat from their peppers will win the trophy.

Scoville is a 2-6 player game that plays for about 60 to 90 minutes. I first saw buzz about the game some time at the end of last year on social media. What really drew me in was the great looking components from the game. It comes with 134 pepper pieces in 10 different colors! Yes, I’m a total sucker for cute thematic pieces in well-developed board game. In addition to the peppers, the game also comes with 6 farmer meeples (also very cool), auction cards, market cards, recipe cards, plaques, coins, bonus action tiles and breeding charts.

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Building your empire in 8 minutes

By Meeple Lady | May 13, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

Great things come in small packages. Case in point -- Eight Minute Empire! — Great things come in small packages. Case in point — Eight Minute Empire!

Eight-minute Empire may come in a small box but it’s a great strategic filler game that lasts probably about 30 minutes. The box itself is 6 inches by 9 inches, so it can easily tuck away in your bag to bust out when you’ve got some time to spare.

The game plays 2-5 players and game play can be varied depending on the total playing. It comes with a sturdy map that when unfolded is about the size of a sheet of paper. The basic mechanics of the game is area control and card set-building.

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Kanban: Trying to keep the boss happy

By Meeple Lady | May 8, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

An overhead of Kanban: Automotive Revolution, which comes with a lot of little pieces and cards. — An overhead of Kanban: Automotive Revolution, which comes with a lot of pieces and cards.

Kanban is one of my more recent purchases and it’s taken me a while to bring it up here on the blog since it’s such a heavy, heavy game and I want to do it justice when talking about it. When you first open the box, there are a million little pieces, including car meeples! Brace yourself, folks, this is a long write-up.

Kanban: Automotive Revolution is a 2-4 player game that plays about 90 to 120 minutes. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, that totally doesn’t factor into explaining the rules for the first time, which, when I first was introduced to it, the rules explanation took seriously nearly 2 hours. The setting is a car factory assembly line. The game at its core is worker placement. You are placing your one worker on a spot in order to activate an action within one of five rooms. And then there’s Sandra, the factory manager who is represented by the pink meeple, checking up on workers’ progress and keeping the factory running efficiently.

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Introducing board games to non-gamers

By Meeple Lady | April 30, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

Gamehaus Cafe in Glendale, CA. I wish Phoenix had something like this! This place is awesome.

Hi, folks! I’m back from being out of town and totally feel recharged. And guess what? I got some board gaming in during my time away.

So the beginning of this post actually starts about a month ago. I get a text message from some friends in Los Angeles, telling me that they’re at GameHaus Cafe and that they’re thinking of me. I actually visited this place about a year ago when I was in town; I didn’t get a chance to play as I was on my way to a wedding reception, but I did get a chance to take some photos and pose nerdily in front of the massive game library. Seriously folks, this place is amazing. You need to check it out!

Anyway, my friends aren’t board gamers at all, but they were invited by another friend who also wanted to check the place out. They were amazed by the sheer volume of board games out there they had never heard of, especially games in the back room where you need to drop off your ID. So they said next time I’m in town that I should bring some games when I visit their pad.

And that’s my cue to let the flood gates open into the world of board gaming …

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Recap of International Tabletop Day

By Meeple Lady | April 17, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

I got to play Lords of Waterdeep for the first time. Here are some of the quests you can collect.

Last Saturday was International Tabletop Day. All my meetup groups around the Valley were hosting their own special event. I ended up going to a friend’s event at his home and then moved over to my usual biweekly gaming group event. It was nice to see friends who don’t usually make it to all the events, so there was some time spent catching up on everybody’s lives.

The first game I played was Lords of Waterdeep. Strangely enough, I’ve never had a chance to play it before. I love the heavy crunchy games, and this game has never been suggested during my usual meetups. It’s a great game though that’s on the short side that introduces the concept of worker placement for new board gamers. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

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