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Topic	thirty-one tabletop games, ranked
SeabassDebeste 03/19/18 5:05:34 PM #125:	16. Blood Bound https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/130877/blood-bound Genre/mechanics: Hidden roles, team vs team, player combat, special powers, social deduction Rules complexity: 5/10 Game length: 15-20 minutes Player count: 6-12 Experience: 40+ games with 6-13 players First played: 2015 In Blood Bound, you are secretly assigned a role on one of two equally sized teams, with a rank that determines your special abilities. At the beginning of the game, you will see the alignment (but not role) of one of your neighbors. From there, the active player becomes the one who holds the Dagger. Your action when you have the dagger is either to pass it to another player, or to stab another player. Being stabbed means taking a damage token - either a question mark or a team color token (as specified by your role), or taking your rank token. The game ends when a player is killed - if the killing team successfully killed the highest-ranked Leader of the opposing team, they win. Otherwise, they lose. Design - BB is excellent, Twilight-y card art and all. You can play several games in a session, and each one will be different as you're assigned a different role (there are nine) and get different combinations of teammates (pretty much endless) and gain allegiance info on different players (depending on if you swap seats). The random first stab/pass can drastically change the course of the game, as the Dagger tends to find the same players many times. Lots of discussion is encouraged, as once you identify your teammates, you need to figure out who is the opposing leader. This can engage people even when they don't hold the dagger, which is awesome. You can bluff (either by being loud or quiet) to try to pretend to be on the other team and cause friendly fire among your opponents. The proof will be in the pudding when you finally have to take your role, which you must do in order to activate your special ability or to intervene on another player's behalf. Prop-wise, the Dagger is a piece of cardboard actually shaped like a particularly savage assassination weapon. Very satisfying to toss at someone either point-first to stab them or handle-first to be polite and hand it over. By far the biggest barrier of entry of this game: learning the card abilities. There are nine, and it's very hard to say "We'll teach them as they come up," as each ability you can only use once - so you're going to want to have some idea of what it'll do before declaring it and revealing your role. Going through each ability can add ten minutes to the teach-time, which means that when BB hits the table, you want to play it at least two or three times to get your explanation time's worth. Enjoyment - I played BB on the very first day I was really introduced to "hobby games," and it was probably the best experience of the day. Hidden roles, constant action, trying to figure out your opponents' roles, and a freaking great dagger. Played it probably three or four times in a row. It was the first game my friend (who got into hobby gaming along with me) got, and we've played it dozens of times since. Aside from odd-numbered games and the early-on games with way too many players, BB's been a near-constant winner. It's high-variance since some roles can be more powerful and the random stabbing at the beginning can tilt a lot toward one team, but you pretty much always play it more than once, so you can always walk away either sated or extra-salty about getting revenge next session. Future - I wound up getting BB myself last year. It's not going anywhere in the rotation, as long as we can continue to muster 6- or 8-person groups. That said, it doesn't always get quite as enthusiastic a draw, and I'm a lot less likely these days to introduce it to new people unless I'm convinced they'll be good gaming partners. I've played it a lot. Bonus question - What games do you want to play more than once per session? Why? Hint for #15 - one of the favorite games of a very vocal poster in this topic --- yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness <cite>SeabassDebeste posted [p:898102944] in thirty-one... [t:76412082]...</cite> <quote>16. Blood Bound https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/130877/blood-bound Genre/mechanics: Hidden roles, team vs team, player combat, special powers, social deduction Rules complexity: 5/10 Game length: 15-20 minutes Player count: 6-12 Experience: 40+ games with 6-13 players First played: 2015 In Blood Bound, you are secretly assigned a role on one of two equally sized teams, with a rank that determines your special abilities. At the beginning of the game, you will see the alignment (but not role) of one of your neighbors. From there, the active player becomes the one who holds the Dagger. Your action when you have the dagger is either to pass it to another player, or to stab another player. Being stabbed means taking a damage token - either a question mark or a team color token (as specified by your role), or taking your rank token. The game ends when a player is killed - if the killing team successfully killed the highest-ranked Leader of the opposing team, they win. Otherwise, they lose. Design - BB is excellent, Twilight-y card art and all. You can play several games in a session, and each one will be different as you're assigned a different role (there are nine) and get different combinations of teammates (pretty much endless) and gain allegiance info on different players (depending on if you swap seats). The random first stab/pass can drastically change the course of the game, as the Dagger tends to find the same players many times. Lots of discussion is encouraged, as once you identify your teammates, you need to figure out who is the opposing leader. This can engage people even when they don't hold the dagger, which is awesome. You can bluff (either by being loud or quiet) to try to pretend to be on the other team and cause friendly fire among your opponents. The proof will be in the pudding when you finally have to take your role, which you must do in order to activate your special ability or to intervene on another player's behalf. Prop-wise, the Dagger is a piece of cardboard actually shaped like a particularly savage assassination weapon. Very satisfying to toss at someone either point-first to stab them or handle-first to be polite and hand it over. By far the biggest barrier of entry of this game: learning the card abilities. There are nine, and it's very hard to say "We'll teach them as they come up," as each ability you can only use once - so you're going to want to have some idea of what it'll do before declaring it and revealing your role. Going through each ability can add ten minutes to the teach-time, which means that when BB hits the table, you want to play it at least two or three times to get your explanation time's worth. Enjoyment - I played BB on the very first day I was really introduced to "hobby games," and it was probably the best experience of the day. Hidden roles, constant action, trying to figure out your opponents' roles, and a freaking great dagger. Played it probably three or four times in a row. It was the first game my friend (who got into hobby gaming along with me) got, and we've played it dozens of times since. Aside from odd-numbered games and the early-on games with way too many players, BB's been a near-constant winner. It's high-variance since some roles can be more powerful and the random stabbing at the beginning can tilt a lot toward one team, but you pretty much always play it more than once, so you can always walk away either sated or extra-salty about getting revenge next session. Future - I wound up getting BB myself last year. It's not going anywhere in the rotation, as long as we can continue to muster 6- or 8-person groups. That said, it doesn't always get quite as enthusiastic a draw, and I'm a lot less likely these days to introduce it to new people unless I'm convinced they'll be good gaming partners. I've played it a lot. Bonus question - What games do you want to play more than once per session? Why? Hint for #15 - one of the favorite games of a very vocal poster in this topic --- yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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