Charming & Open: Board Games!

Power up Players for today’s collaboration with Ian from Adventure Rules! The Charming and Open event is where Ian accepts questions from the community and attempts to answer them in a single post. He has recently started including the community in these questions and here we are!

What are the questions?

We have decided to talk about board games for this post.I have asked Ian:“In a tabletop RPG, which character do you like playing the most (type and favorite character)?”

 

You can read my question for Ian by clicking here!

 

My challenge is to answer:

What parts of playing tabletop are you best at? Where can you improve?

 

This is a pretty interesting question. As I am fairly new to tabletop gaming, I asked the help of my gaming buddies for this question. Jaysen told me that I excel at picking up the rules quickly and that he really likes that I am open minded about the type of games we are playing. A few times a month we get together for a game night and select a game from their massive collection that only seems to continue growing in size. My bucket list has become to play every board game that they own.

 

So I’ve started thinking more in depth about the type of role that I normally play. We played a co-op dungeon game called Gloomhaven and I was immediately drawn to the mage character for several reasons. I’m a creature of habit so choosing the female or the purple tokens are a given, just as much as choosing Yoshi or Daisy in a Mario game is for me. The mage was a female purple caster so I was immediately drawn to her.

It looks more complicated than it is lol

Mages are great characters to use when you want to deal out a ton of damage from a rather safe position (normally behind your teammates lol). Gloomhaven was my first experience with a dungeon diving game and I was super happy to play it cooperatively with my team. My co-worker and his husband have game nights where I am a frequent guest. What I love is that they have a ton of games to play and each with more intricacies than then the previous game.

 

Root is a board game that I’ve recently played with my friends during our weekly game night. In Root, characters battle for control of the land using the resources of their kind. What I have found fascinating about Root is that every faction has different strengths and ways that they can win the game. I played as the Woodland Alliance where my main objective was to spread sympathy to rally supporters for my cause. Once I was able to build sympathy on a designated clearing, I could take control by moving my soldiers into that space.

The more areas of the forest that your character controls, the more options you have when attacking or initiating an action.

My Secret Cards!

 

Root is my example on a way that I know I can improve my board gaming experience. I came in 2nd in Root having played a great game where I was seemingly last until the final few rounds where my plan started coming together. I am the type of player that loves the flashy plays and this tendency pushes me to play “The Long Con” game. A long con is basically looking like I’m always a step behind because I am playing for the huge playoff at the end of the game. Long Cons are super fun to play when they pay off and you see the reaction of the other players in the room ( which happened the 2nd to the last round where I lept into first place).

I’m the green!

All was looking good for me except for 1 fatal flaw… my long con plan to release a large scale attack and score points was thwarted by my miscalculation. When I pulled the move I added my points incorrectly placing me 1 space from winning. During that same round after my turn, my friend Carl who played Marquis de Cat was just 3 spaces from the end and casually walked past me to score his final points and win.

Root isn’t the only board game where I failed at the long con, falling just shy of the victory. Because this strategy requires you to think several moves ahead, one mistake and you can find yourself in 2nd place or worse, still in last waiting to make your final move. I believe I can improve on the timing and farming needed for long cons to really play a well rounded game.

 

My game nights with my co-worker has really opened my mind in the possibilities of playing board games and playing outside of my comfort zone. I am eager to learn and willing to try any and all games to see if I enjoy them or not. Have you played any board games recently? What are your go to roles and where do you think you can improve? Let’s talk board games!

-Luna 🙂