kmusser

Over on Reddit someone asks what board games have you played over 50 times, so I thought I'd try compiling a list, and I think it's:

6 Nimmt/Take 6, 7 Wonders, 7 Wonders Duel, Azul, Backgammon, Blue Max, Can't Stop, Castles of Burgundy, Command & Colors: Ancients, Cosmic Encounter, Dominion, Guillotine, Hearts, Lost Cities, Magic the Gathering, Race for the Galaxy, Risk, Shanghai Rummy, Terraforming Mars, Ticket to Ride, TransAmerica, Zirkus Flohcati

I don't track my plays, so the following I might have over 50, but am not sure, but over 30 at least.

Alhambra, Carcassonne, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Chess, Chez Geek, Dominoes, Empire Builder (over 50 if I grouped the series together), Galaxy Trucker, Give Me the Brain, Illuminati, Illuminati: New World Order, Innovation, Kingdom Builder, Munchkin, Orleans, Pandemic, Puerto Rico, Ra, Road to the Whitehouse, Settlers of Catan, Small World, Splendor, Sushi Go, Thurn & Taxis, Titan, Trivial Pursuit, Uno

and if I added video games: Ancient Domains of Mystery, Europa Universalis IV, Slay the Spire, and Civilization if you merge the versions together.

In the interest of potentially doing more on-line gaming, a list of games I'm interesting in playing with people (generally ones I like and also know well enough to teach). Feel free to friend on various services, I'm kmusser on most of them and kmusser#3303 on Discord. I've starred ones I've played on-line with real people recently. I'm most likely to be available evenings (EST) or weekends (am thankfully still working during the day).

Board games via Steam (friend code: 64836940)
Carcassone (Asmodee)
Galaxy Trucker *
Isle of Skye
Lords of Waterdeep (Playdek)
Memoir '44
Splendor (Asmodee) *
Small World (Asmodee)
Talisman (Asmodee)
Terraforming Mars (Asmodee) *
Ticket to Ride (Asmodee) *
Twilight Struggle (Playdek) *

Board games via Steam via Tabletop Simulator
(clunky but could do almost anything, these are ones I have loaded)
Azul *
Cartographers
Castles of Burgundy *

Board games via Vassal
Command & Colors: Ancients

Board games via their own site
Dominion (https://dominion.games/)
Code Names (https://www.horsepaste.com/)

Board games via Android app (also on many services)
Race for the Galaxy * (friend code: VZIH9QLL)
Terra Mystica
Tokaido

Board games via https://boardgamearena.com/
6 Nimmt! *
Can't Stop *
Lewis & Clark
Puerto Rico *
Russian Railroads *
Stone Age *

Board games via https://www.yucata.de/en
Castles of Burgundy *
El Grande
Macao *
Roll Through the Ages *
Saint Petersburg
Thurn & Taxis *

Board games via http://www.boiteajeux.net/
Alhambra

Board games via https://mattle.online/
Azul *
Blokus

Board games via https://tabletopia.com/ (works like TTS, no automation)
Alien Frontiers
Between Two Cities
Cartographers

Board games via https://www.brettspielwelt.de/
(I haven't used BSW in ages, but am set up there, prefer the English language sites for ease of use, but BSW does have some favorites not on the others)
Diamant
Kingdom Builder
Transamerica

Board games via Boardgamearena or Tabletopia if you have premium (I do not)
7 Wonders
Carcassone
Kingdomino
Lost Cities
Orleans (TT)
Roll for the Galaxy
Sushi Go!
Wingspan (TT)

Non-board games via Steam
(I've not tried any of these multi-player, all the Paradox games are very long, I'm willing to teach CKII or EUIV, playing Paradox games solo is my primary video gaming activity)
Crusader Kings II (Paradox)
Europa Universalis IV (Paradox)
Hearts of Iron IV (Paradox)
Northgard
Stellaris (Paradox)

Games played:

Alchemists, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Istanbul, Machi Koro, Robinson Crusoe, Russian Rails, Splendor (at least 3 times), Stone Age, The Game of 49, Thurn & Taxis, Unpublished Prototype

Honorable mention to Panamax, which I did not get to play, but looked really cool.

( mini-reviews of the new ones )

As a follow-up to that, I'm trying to reduce my game collection, a list for sale is at http://fantasymaps.com/saleslist.html along with some videos and a desk and entertainment center. First come first served, comment here or private message me with what you want.

Will be short since I didn't like this year very much. Starting out spending the 1st quarter out of work was not good. The financial hit from that left me feeling like I was playing catch up the rest of the year, and both zammis and radiant_one struggled quite a bit. The shutdown in the fall didn't help. Did I do anything useful with the enforced time off? No, I became even more hermity than usual and mostly played computer games, though in fairness Skyrim is pretty frickin' awesome. I also played a lot of Ingress, a sort-of virtual geocaching game - join the Enlightened, free on Android. Only travel was a weekend trip to Mt. Gretna, PA and visiting family for the holidays. Highlight was radiant_one finishing grad school, that at least was definitely a cause for celebration.

Best books: Digger by Ursula Vernon, Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

Best new to me music: Thea Gilmore, Murphy's Heart; Salsa Celtica, El Camino; Ramblin' Sailors, Bright Shining Clear. Ramblin' Sailors also get best concert attended.

Best new board game: probably Lewis & Clark, though I've only played it twice. Most played game is probably Kingdom Builder.

Best movie: I didn't get to see many, probably Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.

Best TV: Game of Thrones, Sherlock, Downton Abbey

Computer games: I've actually gotten more into them than I used to be. Besides Skyrim and Ingress, also lost quite a bit of time to Victoria II, Civ, and various older games like Master of Orion II thanks to Gog.com. Lost a weekend to LOTRO. Am currently eyeing Assassin's Creed IV and Europa Universalis IV.

Another great TCEP this past weekend. Games played: Alhambra, Dixit, Dominion, Galaxy Trucker, Guillotine, Keltis, Kingdom Builder, Meteor, Nefarious, Rise of Augustus, Roll Through the Ages, Seven Sisters, Ticket to Ride, Union Pacific, Wizard's Brew.

( mini-reviews of the new ones under the cut )

A last call for TCEP, for those of you going if you want me to bring anything specific from my game library let me know.

A follow-up to my previous post, the hostel is available to be taken over, but definitely not for free. So I want a little better idea of a head count to see if it would be worth it (if not I'll probably still do something similar, just at our house instead of the hostel).

[Poll #1854275]

A follow-up on Miskatonic School for Girls, I did get a chance to play it on Saturday. It's a card game where the theme is a girls school where the staff/faculty are various Mythos creatures and the object is to be the last one with any sanity left. It's a deck building game, but without a whole lot of choices. You purchase students to build up your own deck, and faculty to go in your opponents deck, and then the students and faculty duke it out and if the students lose so does your sanity. Your choice each turn boils down to either help yourself or hurt your opponent. Overall feel of the game was kind of like Ascension mixed with a "take that" game like Munchkin or Red Dragon Inn. I am kind of meh on it, it was ok, but very random - from the publisher description I was hoping for a little more depth there. This is based on just one play, I'll give it a few more and see if it grows on me. My initial impression is that fans of Munchkin-type games will probably like it, but those hoping for more in the deck building genre will probably be disappointed.

Miskatonic School for Girls has arrived, sadly a couple days late for Madicon. Hopefully I'll get a chance to play it this weekend and will post a review.