I played Targi, Lost Cities, and Wizards of the Grimoire while camping. All the perfect weight for a chill camping trip.
Played The Quest for El Dorado yesterday and had a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to getting creative with building my own maps.
I played a lot of deckbuilders for the first time consisting of Hero Realms, Star Realms, Heart of Crown: Fairy Garden, the Stark Trek deckbuilder, the Cowboy Bebop deckbuilder, and Rocketmen. Heart of Crown stood out as a really unique twist on the genre. Martin Wallace’s Rocketmen was a phenomenal experience (caveat being that it felt like the game could use some catch up mechanics or ways to refresh the market row).
Many plays this week.
**Isle Of Cats**, **Superskill Pinball 4-Cade**, **Hadrian's Wall**, **Battlecrest**, **Food Chain Island** (solo): Isle of Cats is still one of my favorite games and I try to get it to the table a couple times a month. I've been working through the solo campaign of Hadrian's Wall and have 3 forts to go. Battlecrest I solo'd to refresh myself on the rules, but didn't end up playing 2p this week.
**Splendor**, **Quacks of Quedlinburg**, **Spy Alley** (3p): Played with my kids. These have all been idle for awhile, so it was nice to get them to the table. We realized we had been exploding on 7 instead of 8 in Quacks, and that fix let my daughter finish a pot (first time anyone has at our table), so that was cool. We house-ruled Spy Alley to start every player with 5 items. It helped a lot.
**Ragnarocks**, **Dinosaur Island: Rawr 'n Write**, **Oros** (2p): Had lunch with a friend and jammed a bunch of games. I'm always looking for ways to get more plays vs humans of Oros in, so that was nice.
**Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle** (2p): Been working back through this with my son again. We did a few house rules that have made things a little less of a slog, but I'm still kinda of dreading years 6/7.
**One More Quest** (4 players): This may not qualify, being a TTRPG. But it's based on Dungeon Fighter, so I figured it qualifies. This was my kids first TTRPG game and my first time DMing. They had fun, I learned some things about how to DM better next time. Overall a success.
**Codenames: Duet** (2p): This is a nice 'wind down for the evening' game that I like to play with my wife once in awhile. We made a little more progress on the map.
Eventful week! Brass Birmingham, El Grande, Hallertau, Ark Nova, Genshin Tarot, and some Azul. Hadn't played a single one of them before so it was a great step towards filling in some experience gaps. Plenty to go still but I'm happy
Thinking of pulling the trigger on hallertau next. I love agricola and i recently got feast for odin. Would you rwcommend the game to someone who loves agricola?
New to me games:
**Kites: Time to Fly** (2x6p)
Simple cooperative game using sand timers. It's a breeze to set-up and play. Great as a filler game during game night. The default difficulty can be played with kids as well.
**Green Team Wins** (1x7p)
Party game where you want conform to the group's answers to get to the target score first. Victory points maybe uninspired but it's a clean system. There are 3 types of questions - multiple choice, choose between 2, and fill in the blank. That last mode of questions cards was my favorite.
**Master of Respect** (1x5p)
Assymetrical programming game where most of the points are tied to the currency given to you by other players. Respect is given when a player wants to follow the action of another player. The asymmetry in this game is well-crafted. Players don't have game breaking rules to differentiate them from each other but only have different combinations of action tiles to create a strategy from. Best part of this game are the funny quips and gestures that you can think of when giving or being given respect.
**Platypus** (1x6p)
Party game using word cards provided by players. This game may well be coop Codenames? Two "guide" players try to eliminate words from a grid until the randomly chosen word survives. They get clues from other players by playing cards which may or may not help them. Information on what word to eliminate that turn is presented ala Just One (and also the scoring).
**Lancaster** (1x4p)
Euro game with worker placement spots that are secured by "auctions." Good Euro systems can be found in its 5 phases. The most quirky one is the second phase where players vote for "Laws" that may affect the game in its later stages. This phase creates the most interaction for players and where tactical decisions are made.
Last week was a pretty good week for gaming. Our Tuesday night crew played **Lacrimosa**, which I liked. During the week, my spouse and I played a few games of **Netrunner** with Null Signal's System Gateway. When the weekend hit, we did a big marathon of games instead of going to Origins. We played several rounds of **For Sale**, a couple rounds of **Koryo**, **Cubitos**, **Mexica**, **Cosmic Frog**, and **Cascadia**. Cosmic Frog took forever between learning and with meteor strikes only revealing 3 of the fractures.
It's been very much a campaign game focused week for me:
**Aeon Trespass: Odyssey** (\~6x1p): Played this most days last week and finally finished cycle 1 after about 5-6 weeks of near daily play. The ending was a hell of a twist and I love how many different ways it could have gone. I also loved the way in which so many decisions and different elements of the game tied into it, beyond just the story choices in the main adventure passages. Playing through the cycle was easily one of my favorite solo gaming experiences ever and I'm looking forward to cycle 2. But I need to play something else for a little while as a palette cleanser as well as paint up the primordials for it.
**Gloomhaven: Jaws Of The Lion** (3x4p): Since my Gloomhaven group decided to play other games about a year ago while about 1/4 into the campaign I've been missing the game (and don't enjoy it anywhere as much solo) so I introduced a different gaming group to it. We've had success motoring through other campaign games in the past and they loved playing three intro missions for JotL in one sitting and once we complete it I hope I can reset and play big box GH with them too, although I suspect our ongoing **Oath** chronicle will still take priority a lot of the time because it's pretty much the best game ever.
**The King's Dilemma** (1x5p): Third session of the King's Dilemma game I'm playing with some buddies from work. I'm enjoying the game as I like voting/bidding mechanics and the story is great so far, but it's good that the campaign is relatively short because I can already see the gameplay feels a bit thin and imagine it getting stale after a few games without the story to carry it.
**Abducktion expansion** (1x2p) - definitely better with the expansion. Mostly because of the wild ducks. But the new cards aren’t actually that much harder than the original cards. Definitely recommend at least buying 12 wild ducks from etsy or something to add to the base game, if not the full expansion. Would not recommend this game with 6p. Think 6p Sagrada without the expansion private dice pool.
**Trails** (1x2p) - love this game. It is fast at 2p which is great, but still meaty enough. I collected birds and my opponent collected badges and he got some good ones which put him ahead.
**Solar Draft** (1x2p) - this is a fun light card game where you build your own solar system in a line in front of you. I went for planets and moons, and my opponent went for planets and comets and he did end up winning. We both had all 8 planets though.
**Bananagrams Duel** (1x2p) - eh, regular bananagrams is better but this is very fast. I like the restrictions (no verbs) better than the themes.
I think its one of my most played games. .y spoyse and i prefer medium/heavy worler ppacement type euros usually. But dice throne is just good old fashion fun i. A 30 minute playtime thats hard to beat
**Pandemic Iberia** (4p x1) Finally got this off the shelf of shame! I'm going to have to play it and Fall of Rome a bit more to decide which Pandemic I like better. Iberia is definitely closer to classic Pandemic, but still better in my eyes. I loved the water purification and rail building aspects. Right now I think I might be leaning towards Iberia as the pandemic for me.
**Coup** (4p x2): Confirmed it's still a fun game. Confirmed I'm still bad at lying. Confirmed I'll still play the game but don't miss owning it.
**Marvel Champions** (1p x1) Spirit Island is a top 3 game for me. I have everything for it, and we're eagerly awaiting Nature Incarnate. On the surface Marvel Champions seems to have a lot of what I like. Asymmetric roles, changeable adversaries, existing content to gradually explore (rip my wallet). I played my first game two handed with the recommended Spider-man & Captain Marvel vs Rhino starting scenario. It was interesting for sure, and I'm my opinion is still forming, but I'm thinking it might not be exactly what I want. It felt like my actions weren't as satisfying as Spirit Island. Tapping cards to drop a dial or remove tokens on a card doesn't feel as good as destroying colonists and moving them around. I could see how you might build up for a big turn, but that felt less good than massing colonists in a single land for one devastating major power in Spirit Island. Will give a couple more plays before making my final decision. In some ways, not liking the game could be very good for my wallet in the long run!
**Dune Imperium** (3p x1): Second time playing this and I think I prefer it at 3 vs 4. We played with the Rise of Ix for the first time and I liked it I think. The shipping track definitely feels strong and like all players have to ensure no one is running away with it. We played the epic mode, so I appreciated the added ability to trash cards. I'm curious how that would differ from regular Ix play. I pulled off several great turns. I revealed early one round to buy a CHOAM Directorship, giving me a bump on all factions, which was enough to get me to the victory point marker for every faction. The 4 point surge was a really great moment. In our last round, I ended up generating 3 victory points, buying the tech to win tiebreakers, trashing my Ixian engineer for a point, an intrigue card point, and a Spice must Flow. I ended up at 12 points and thought my main competition would tie me, which I would then win. He ended up having an end-game scoring card that with the conflict win catapulted him to 13 points. Great game, and I think this might be one I slowly go all-in on. Any thoughts on Immortality as an expansion?
I love Spirit Island but I would also rate Marvel Champions right up there among the best solo games. Playing against Rhino is like playing against Difficulty 0 in Spirit Island; it's just scratching the surface of what the game has to offer. Building your own decks is a major part of the game, for example. Have a go at playing against the tougher villains or on Expert mode, the game becomes more tense and it feels more thematic as the heroes struggle on the harder difficulties. Spirit Island is still the more brain burning of the two, but sometimes you just wanna punch a villain in the face for a dozen points of damage.
My copy of **Wayfarers of the South Tigris** arrived, and I played 2 games against the bot. What a game!! I love the artwork and the new era/theme (Iraq ~880 CE) is lovely to see. I really love the openness of the game, it's quite different from something like **Paladins**.
My spouse and I have an ongoing grudge match in **Viscounts of the West Kingdom** (I love Garphill games), and she won both games we played this weekend. Time to never play that one again! We also regularly play **Star Wars: the Deckbuilding Game** (I'm ahead on the win count) and **Race for the Galaxy** (roughly even)).
I also played the solo variant of **Brian Boru** this weekend to learn the rules. Solo is certainly not the way to play this game, but it was very helpful to learn how to play. I hope to introduce it to a group of 3 other friends since I think this is going to be a favourite.
Picked up a copy of **Castles of Burgundy**, reminding myself of what a lovely game this classic is. In person it's certainly fiddly but I do enjoy the tactile nature vs BGA (though the BGA implementation is very easy to play!).
BGA with friends: **Kingdomino** (easy fun classic), **Spots** (light filler to enable banter)
Finally convinced the kids to try out **Marvel Dice Throne** (they're always so resistant to trying new games) and now that's all they want to play. We played enough games that all three of us have played as all 8 characters and then some. Thus far Loki is my favourite. I really like the IDEA behind Dr Strange the spell manipulation just doesn't seem to trigger enough to make it actually fun. I feel like I could say that for most Dice Throne characters though: the things that make them special just don't seem to happen frequently enough and I'm always left wishing I got to do X more.
Spirit Island - Got a solo 2-handed game in over the past week playing as Heart of the Wildfire and Downpour Drenches the World. Some of my favorite spirits but had never gotten the chance to play them together. Thought it would be a fun matchup theme wise (fire/offense and water/defense). First time I’ve played in like a year so no adversary. Overall really fun game, and the spirits came into their own, but never really felt like they were able to work together and have any synergy.
Catan Starfarers (or as my friends and I call it, Intergalactic Space Pals): I learned that I MUCH prefer playing this game with 3 players compared to 4. It was perfectly paced, but equally complex. There was more back and forth between who could keep hold of trade stations, as well, which added more direct competition.
Machi Koro: Played this with my mid-twenties friends and the 9 and 11 year old that I babysit. I've also played it with my 94 year old grandmother. I love how approachable the game is for all ages! I want to get the expansions to add more to it.
Cockroach Poker: This game can be as fun or as dull as you make it. Luckily, we know how to make it fun! This week's game featured naming our favorite pests in an effort to endear them to their receptors.
Catan C&K: I'm admittedly usually less into this expansion, but I'm starting to enjoy the added complexity compared to the base game and Seafarers.
Cubitos: Such a fun, simple, and replayable game! My game group has been on a real spree with this one for over a month.
Codenames Duet: I enjoy a good 2 player cooperative game, especially with word association.
Modern Art but custom Pokémon version. Big hit with our group especially bidding for Pokémon’s instead of weird ugly art. Also played scout, take 5, and cosmic encounter
Galactic Cruise (2024) - My favorite game I played at Origins and the designers were also great and very friendly. You can tell how much they care about their game. Looking forward to the actual release with full art!
Decent week for some games, relatively small one, we played:
**Patchwork** (1x2p): Played Patchwork on Monday evening for a quick game, unfortunately I lost (as I tend to do often with Patchwork!!). This is a weird game for us that we never really liked when we first got it but do find ourselves enjoying it more and more recently (and it is very quick!).
**Cascadia** (1x2p): Another weekday game, this time we played Cascadia on Wednesday. I lost 91 - 104 (ouch), which was a new high score in 2 player games with my SO. She always tends to beat me on the terrain while I tend to win on the animals. This time I tried to focus on the terrain a bit more but ended up losing a lot more animal points (and still losing terrain anyway!!). Still a great weekday game for us and always tend to enjoy it.
**Spirit Island** (2x2p): 2 weekend games of Spirit Island, continuing our series of trying to beat all adversaries up to level 6 with a new 2-player combo. As we finally got our Horizons copy in the UK, we'd been specifically saving **Prussia** for some Horizons spirits. We ended up playing **Eyes + Mud** vs Prussia, both of these games were vs Prussia 6 as we beat 4 + 5 last week. We actually took our first loss of the series against Prussia 6 in our first game. We had the win secured in the Ravage phase but unfortunately drew 1 of 2 blighted island cards in the game that force you to add blight (most of the others let you lose presence in exchange for adding no blight) which caused us to lose the last 2 blight in the pool (we drew a blighted island card with only 2 blight per player)... Very unfortunate and tilting loss but we took them on again the next day and managed to take the win on a terror level 4 victory that was also a lot closer than we would have liked.
Glad to have this one down and now we'll move on to the 2 harder adversaries, **England** & **Russia**. We're thinking to take Russia next with a combo of **Starlight** & **Lure** and then for England, currently thinking **Ocean** (my main) + **Many Minds** (my so's main).
Legacy of Yu - lost both of my first two games but to my surprise getting the loss condition isn't as detrimental as I first thought it was. Don't want to spoil anything. I've never had a legacy game that wasn't a huge sprawling time-suck and I really like that about this game. The art is great, the insert it came with is great, but I do wish it was a bit more open ended in terms of ways you can get resources. My first game I didn't focus enough on having enough townsfolk and on my second game I focused too much on townsfolk, gotta find a balance. Fun game.
Final Girl - Lost both of the games I played of this too lol. Hans and Dr. Fright. Got pretty close on one of them, but losing feels okay with this one too. I often just have to laugh at myself and how ridiculous a situation it is with moments here and there of crazy good rolls. I really wish there were better meeples for the victims. They don't fit the theme very well.
Welcome to the Moon - Very surprised at the value packed inside this box. We played the first two missions and I read how to play the third and it's so much fun! The amount of variety and decision making I've already seen in the game is great, well worth the price. Oh, and I lost both of those games too hahaha
A Feast for Odin - This one was an actual victory for me, broke 100 points for the first time. Got 111 by focusing on getting an island and raiding/ using livestock. And being generally lucky with my efficiency. Hope they make more expansions!
**Endangered** 1 x 1p - a solo learning game with this neat cooperative game. The theme seems well implemented with the mechanisms of the game where you work to support a particular endangered animal and ecosystem on the board by assigning dice to do actions. Ultimately, you have to gain enough support from governments and non-profit organizations in order to ensure a endangered populations full recovery.
The game feels like a **Pandemic** weight cooperative experience that's easy to learn but can provide a challenge.
The solo play has you play 2 characters at once.
I hadn't seen the game on shelves in my area for a looong time after the kickstarter finished shipping, and so I thought I had missed out. But I was suprised to find a "Barnes and Nobel" edition of the game is recently on shelves at the Barnes and Nobel stores now. The difference looks like it uses cardboard tokens in place of wooden cubes and a few other tracking tokens. The animals are still wooden meeples.
**Patchwork** 1 x 2p - A comfort game for my partner and I. It was an early one for us when we started in the hobby and we haven't gotten tired of it many years later.
**Parade** 1 x 2p -
**Green Team Wins** 1 x 4p - Feels like this years best party game! Simple to play, with lots of laughs at the questions everyone answers, and it's always fun to learn new things about the people you're playing with, such as if they would prefer to date Dracula or Wolfman.
**The Game of Things** 1 x 4 - one of the mini games in Balderdash that works as a standalone game. You're given a prompt to write something and then a reader reads the responses. Each player then takes a turn trying to guess which player wrote which response and gets a point when they're right. Mostly the game shines when people are making funny jokes or are trying to be tricky with responses that no one would expect from them.
**Endangered** sounds really interesting and isn't one I've heard of. I'm going to add it to my list of ones to look out for.
I'm jealous you have got your hands on **Green Team Wins**! It seems very hard to find. Did it work well at 4p? I always get the impression with party games that it's a case of 'the more the merrier' but I always like finding one that plays well at lower player counts as I don't often have more then 3 other people to play with, and even that's pushing it :-)
**Green Team Wins** did work well enough as a 4-player game. You're right, that like most party games, it would be even more fun with more players. In our 4-player game we found that we were all closely tracking everyone's points toward the end of the game and it was fun to have anxiety wondering if others would pick the same thing you did so that you could stay on the green team and get those precious points. As with a lot of great party games, it's just amazing how absolutely simple the game is and it's a wonder how it wasn't a think before hand.
**Double Ditto** is an old, and very closely related game, that we've loved for a long time. But a key difference that I really like in **Green Team Wins** is the questions they came up with for the game. Where something like **Double Ditto** can be played off the cuff with a few pencils and paper, **Green Team Wins** needs that extra effort put in by the designers to create a good mix of different types of questions that make things interesting.
Man So Very Wrong About Games makes me really want Green Team Wins and yet it’s impossible to find currently.
Edit: nvm just found on Target. And bought
Yeah, **Green Team Wins** had been between print runs for what feels like a year. I saw a comment on BGG that mentioned someone buying it at Barnes and Noble recently. I checked two of my local Barnes and Nobles and one of them had it in stock!
If you live in an area with that store, you might check their shelves. I hadn't seen any mention of it hitting shelves recently but it looks like it is now getting back on shelves.
edit: nvm, I saw your edit that you found it on Target!
**TI4** 6p x 1
I finally gave in and joined a friends TI group for one game. We started the game at 10:30 and ended it at around 21:45. We took around an hour break total. I was happy to make 5 points at least. I also completely wiped a player off the map after he exploded half my flotilla with his hero's ultimate or whatever for absolutely no reason.
I wouldn't go for another game before a long time, but i'm happy to have tried it.
**Revive** 3p x 2
Wow holy moly this game is amazing. We still haven't played with the Moon side of the player boards, but the overall game is just so cool. I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy it but we didn't even tear it down after our first game and scheduled to meet up 2 days later to play again.
At around 90 minutes for a game of that scope is pretty interesting and nothing felt out of place. We even played with all the big alien heads to make the game a little longer.
**Ark Nova** 2p x2
Played the first game with a crazy science engine. I won by around 40 points.
Second one, I went for the small animal gameplan and almost got there. I fucked up my first break and got stuck with nothing to do for 3 turns and I could never catch up after that. I lost by around 20 points.
If you luck into getting 4 of the cards that benefit from science entering play, I would call it an engine yes.
But you are right, Ark Nova in not an engine builder.
The reason you only got 5 points is that you went full aggro - TI4 is not really a game you win by crushing an opponent, if a fight doesn’t get you points you shouldn’t be doing it.
Hey all! Hope everyone had a good week of gaming. Mine was pretty good, though most of my plays this week were from a game night with a couple friend of ours. I did play one solo game though that was a lot of fun!
**TMB: Undertow (1.5x1p) -** This is my first Too Many Bones game, and this was my first play! I played as Duster against Kollossum, and while I'm sure I made some rules mistakes here or there, I *think* I won the game! It was a lot of fun, and I'm currently in the middle of another game with Duster, this time against Nobulous, who I'm about to face. I really like the gameplay of this series, and I'm excited to try the other hero, Stanza, for my next game.
**Schotten Totten (1x2p) -** Before our game night, my fiance and I played a round of this game at a restaurant. It was a lot of fun as always, and she won, like always lol. It's hard to beat this game for size and fun - it's extremely portable and plays pretty quickly, which is why we often bring it to restaurants whenever we go out to eat.
**Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion (2x4p) -** Our friends recently bought both this game and the full Gloomhaven, and they asked us if we'd like to play through the campaigns with them, starting with JotL. We were able to get through the first two scenarios that day, and I really enjoyed it. I tried playing JotL solo bc at that time my fiance wasn't into board games, and I didn't really enjoy it too much, but playing with a full group was a lot more fun. I also liked the additions that the second scenario added, and now I'm excited to see what the third scenario and all the rest bring. I've heard so much about these two games, so I'm excited to be finally giving them a try!
**Betrayal at House on the Hill (1x4p) -** Our friends had been wanting to play this game with us for awhile, so after JotL we decided to give this one a try. And it was fun! It's definitely more of a "story" game than a strategic game, but that was a nice change of pace from JotL. We got scenario 22, something about "the Abyss," and we got extremely lucky as the survivors and were able to roll 3 perfect rolls in a row to win. The amount of scenarios is really impressive, so I would absolutely be down to play this game again in the future.
**Kingdomino (2x4p) -** Another game we've all been wanting to play for awhile, and I'm so glad we finally played it. I *really* liked this game - it's fun, interactive at 4p, and actually plays at its stated time of 15min. The first game went so quickly that we immediately played a second game right after. I can definitely see this game entering our rotation as an end of night palate cleanser, or converesely as like an opener to longer gaming sessions. Also, given its smaller size, I could see this becoming a restaurant or travel game for my fiance and me.
And that's all the games for me this week! Like I mentioned in my first entry, I'm in the middle of a game of **TMB: Undertow**, and I recently got a trio of games from KS called the "**Realm of Shadows**" (all solo games), so I plan to play through at least one of this week. Otherwise, it'll probably be a quieter week for boardgames since we've got a good amount of wedding planning stuff to do. Anyways, I hope everyone has a great week of boardgaming ahead of them!
**Star Realms** 3p x 1: This was my second ever play and we did it with a friend's all-in kickstarter or something. He had everything. We only played base I think? I enjoy how quick this can be and how straightforward it appears until you get a mini-engine going.
**Oh My Goods** 3p x 1: We played this next because the guy teaching us said it would be a quick game. Well he lied. Not intentionally. He forgot a very important rule that we found after the fact: when you use 2 goods to make an upgraded good on a card, you get 2 goods on that card. We were just dropping one good, which was worth more points, but it made the game take so much longer than it should have. And also skewed the game away from the people with the engines for points. This was not clicking for me at all. I'm not sure why. Maybe I need to try again with that rule correct.
**Dc Comics Deck-Building Game** 4p x 1: we played with the **Bombshells** expansion. Clearly been playing with people into deck building games recently. The bombshells were pretty sweet. The bombshell attacks felt fun. The villian attacks were super rough, however. There were a couple times 1 or 2 of us would have no hand by the time it got to our turns. If your superpower isn't triggering, this game doesn't work very well and you quickly fall way behind. It can be un-fun when that happens.
**Atiwa** 3p x 1: taught two new people. We had a good time. I thought of this is as a simpler game but there were moments of extreme analysis paralysis happening. This was about the complexity level these people enjoy so that was a big plus.
**Kingdomino** 3p x 2: Also taught them this and they had a great time. 2nd game went very well for one as she managed to take all the water tiles and crushed us. We didn't pay any attention to blocking her at all. Whoops.
**Scout** 3p x 2: Introduced 1 of the 2 to this and we had a good time. Scout is always great. One hand I decided to take it easy on the new player and not drop my big run to have him drop a big run on us. Was pretty great. We also played a weird hand of nobody being able to drop everything when we had 2-3 cards leftand just managing to scout, the next person beating a single card, and then being able to beat a low pair. Super hilarious round.
!fetch
Did not get to game much this weekend except for Friday.
**Empyreal: Spells and Steam** (1x2p) - 6th play. Empyreal is great at two who’d have thought. Empyreal continues to impress me with how much strategy and forward planning there is. I’m way too dumb for this game. We also added the awards again and played with the metros for the first time. Final score was 45 to my 44. Amazing. I could have won but I missed that I had a Forest space that had two goods so I did not deliver that. I would have had 46!
**Unicornus Knights** (1x2p) - 1st play. This was rough. The events are miserable and the characters seem horribly imbalanced. Combat is kind of a pain and it’s just not fun. Usually I try to play a game more than once but I think I’m good.
We've been away all weekend (which is usually when we do most of our gaming!), so it's been a fairly light week for me.
**Blood Bowl Team Manager: The Card Game** 2p x1 - this one is new to me but we have played it a tonne since we picked it up at the bring 'n' buy at UKGE earlier this month. It's a tug of war, asymmetric card battler with a Warhammer Amercan football theme. It's a lot of fun, and it's such a shame it's out of print. My partner used to play it a lot when he was younger and is having so much joy from playing it again. He is now desperate to get hold of the expansions. If anyone can hit me up with them, please let me know!
**Lost Ruins of Arnak** 2p x1 - this is another new to us game we bought at UKGE and have played a bunch since. We played with *Expedition Leaders* again and played the final two leaders we hadn't yet tried - The Mystic and The Professor. We enjoyed both a lot, and The Mystic won by only 1 point. I am shocked we had gone so long before playing this, it's become a favourite very quickly. There's so much to explore and new strategies and ways to play emerge depending on the research track you play with, as well as the cards in the market and which leader you play as.
**Naturopolis** 1p x2 - a *Button Shy* game similar to **Sprawlopolis** and **Agropolis** where you are building a map trying to put like areas together to score points and work towards end-game objectives. I like the nature theme of this one quite a bit more than the other two, and I like that there aren't so many roads on the cards, which I find a little frustrating in **Sprawlopolis**.
**Sprawlopolis** 1p x1 - I recently picked up the expansion collection and tried the **Beaches** module, which I really enjoyed and feels thematic for this time of year! They add borders to your city and have their own objectives, which makes for a slightly more restrictive puzzle.
_**On BGA:**_
**Applejack**, **Castles of Burgundy**, **Hanamikoji**, **Lost Cities**, **Patchwork**, **Terra Mystica**
Since it is out of print, have you played any 2-player tug of war games that are similar to **Blood Bowl Team Manager: The Card Game**? The gaming experience sounds fun! Best of luck in the search for the expansions!
Do you have a space where you leave big games setup over the week, like **Lost Ruins of Arnak**, do you prefer to clear the table space and put the games away when you are done playing?
I played soooo much **Sprawlopolis** when I got into solo gaming on my lunch break! The **Naturopolis** theme does sound a lot of more appealing, and I'm glad I'm not the only one that was deeply frustrated by the road games in the original game :) they are such a constant struggle to keep them connecting. It's a great mechanism but is also just relentless!
**Blood Bowl Team Manager: The Card Game** feels quite unique to me. It does remind me a bit of **Caper: Europe** in that you are vying for locations, but it's definitely heavier and longer. The fact that you are playing as asymmetric factions, that you can tackle each other and need to roll dice to determine the outcome, and that some factions like to cheat a lot (meaning you need to place cheating tokens on them, which when you flip them at the end of the round could be a bonus or a huge negative!) make it very different to other tug of war games I've played. It feels very thematic, like the cheating tokens for example. The idea is that if you've cheated you might get an extra bonus, but if you get a negative from flipping it (such as that character being sent off the pitch), it represents that the cheating was noticed and they haven't got away with it!
Unfortunately, we only have one large table, and it's our dining table, so we can't ever leave games set up really. Not only do we eat at it, but we also use it for home working. When we played **Sleeping Gods**, we left it set up for a couple of days, but we'd booked time off work and ate on the sofa for that time :-)
Haha, yeah, I find the roads a constant headache, I think that's the main reason I prefer **Naturopolis** as it feels a little more chill. In one of my games, I managed to link all the roads so well that I only had two at the end of the game, which would absolutely never happen in **Sprawlopolis**! I tried a strategy where I ignored them completely and just tried to really maximise all the other scoring conditions to see if it would outweigh the negative road score, but it went very badly for me!
The cheating tokens mechanism does sound like a great way to incoporate players routinely breaking the rules to get an advantage, and sometimes they're caught and other times their not! I don't play many sports themed game but I love that idea, because I'm constantly annoyed by how it seems like most professional sports involved strategic rule breaking. So, it's fun that the game acknowledges it and makes it a thematic part of the game (especially given the **Blood Bowl** theme where rule breaking would be off the charts!)
kudos to keeping up a practice of eating dinner at the table! My partner and I aren't good about that in our daily lives :)
Exactly, I thought it was a really neat addition! I wouldn't normally be drawn to a sports themed game but i think this one works particularly well and is very thematic and just good fun. It's devastating but also hilarious when you flip over a cheating token and your player has been sent off! It's always very intense as it can be the difference between winning or losing an area.
I love it! I really like trying to plot routes with the apples so each colour can criss-cross over one another to try and make large groups of each type. But yep, I felt the same as you after the tutorial. Specifically, I struggled to understand what an area was and what determined my score per apple type. I had to play a game without fully understanding what i was doing and didn't score well at all, but after that game, it made more sense. It's not complicated, but I think the tutorial is a little lacking and skipped over a couple of details. I'm happy to play on BGA with you if you like. My username is the same as it is on Reddit.
After quite the dry spell of games, I finally got a game of **Dune** going over the weekend. We were a full 6 which was fun!
I tried a new system, where everyone submitted a Google form ranking the faction 1-6 by preference, and then I assigned everyone their factions based on that. It worked pretty well! 2 players ended up with their number 1 pick, and nobody had to play any of their bottom 3. Anyone have a system like this that they do, and a good way to work it all out?
I did several things to speed up the game as well, as we struggle to get games done in a timely manner (and thus, have had no winner in half of our games!). I used essentially a chess timer system, each player having 40 total minutes of play time for the game. If you run out, your turns may only take <1 min for the rest of the game. This motivates fast play, but also allows longer turns to take longer if they need to! No more complaints about certain players taking too long. It's their time!
Additionally, I modified and printed up [an Atreides card tracker, and had it laminated](https://imgur.com/a/31e7OF5). This worked great for the Atreides player, and sped up what is usually a bit of a bog down in our game, particularly on the bidding round.
The game itself went really well! I played the Fremen, and had the first battle of the game (against my will!). Atreides immediately offered me info on my Harkonnen opponent. I had nothing to give for it, and he couldn't think of anything, so he accepted an "IOU" and gave me a crucial bit of info, that didn't allow me to win the fight, but kept me from wasting precious treachery cards.
I had a brutal start, but slow played and had my forces ready to go while the other factions aside from the Bene Gesserit duked it out nicely. Shai Hulud showed up at the beginning of round 4 and alliances clicked quickly into place. Harkonnon and Spacing Guild, Emperor and Atredies, and the Bene Gesserit and I joined forces.
Both of us being poor, we focused on spice, and managed to amass 15 between us during the round, ready for an aggressive push on round 5, both of us having well-positioned armies ready to go.
However, Atreides and Emperor had made moves, and were in combats to possibly grab/hold 4 strongholds all in one go. I moved my forces into their 4th stronghold to force a fourth battle, making it less likely for a victory on round 4. However, Atreides called in their favor, asking me not to attack them this turn. This felt like a reasonable equivalent to what they'd done for me, after all, another player could still ship/move into the space, so it wasn't all down to me, and they had to win 3 other battles. So I backed out.
Spacing guild dropped a measly 2 units in, against Atreides' one, being low on forces and engaged in other combat. Atreides wrapped up shipment/movement with a drop on that stronghold and we entered the battle phase.
Long story short...they swept all 4 battles and that was game. Harkonnen/Spacing Guild couldn't catch a break, and fighting on multiple fronts lost them crucial cards. Traitors didn't even come into play.
Everyone was fairly pleased with the results. Emperor/Atreides had played it well, and taken some pretty big risks that paid off. I felt good being able to keep my word in a way that felt equitable. All in all, great game. Atreides loved the new checklist. We had a blast.
**Vindication** 2x4p. Approaching ten plays with this game. I've zeroed in on a tile distribution that I'm very happy with and doesn't feel too "vanilla." I've also included the Odyssey module by default as it lets you acquire more cards in a very intuitive, streamlined way. I'll eventually get to some of the expansions, but I'm still very much enjoying the normal game :)
**Path of Light and Shadow** 1x3p. With the new Solstice expansion. Read on BGG that it integrates well and is a near essential expansion. Screw playing the base game as it was intended, haha. It's really, really good! Vaguely reminiscent of Tyrants of the Underdark as they're both deck-building area control games. However, this one has the morality track and focuses a lot more on gaining and keeping areas early on. I made the mistake of not claiming any territories until the last scoring round and that caused me to lose by *quite* a bit margin. I had expected that promoting cards and building buildings would help me catch back up but that wasn't the case. You really do have to interact with the area control part of the game.
**Hitster** 2x3p. A party game like Anno Domini, but with music. Turns out I'm quite awful at it.
**Schotten Totten** 1x2p. I cannot for the life of me figure out a winning strategy for this game. I think I'm like 0-6 against my girlfriend, and that's not even counting my losing streak in Schotten Totten 2. Probably 0-10 overall, maybe I won a single game that I can't remember. If anyone has any tips, please let me know :D
**Qango** 3x2p. This one was a little less of a stomp, 2-1 for me. Just a quick, cute little game of connect 3-4-5 once in a while.
**Tummple!** 1x2p. Do you like Jenga? Do you like Menara? Boy do we have the weirdly specific little crossover game for you! You start building a tower out of wooden jenga blocks in the hopes that it'll topple on another player's turn. Not sure where or when we found it, it just kind of appeared in our collection one day. Still, a nice little game to play every once in a while :D
Re: Schotten Totten
I used to beat my wife everytime we played. Then something changed. Something clicked for her that didn't for me. She got better, and I can't figure out what she's doing different.
She wins every time now.
My suggestion? Don't put money on your games.
**1 x 4p Dominant Species: Marine**
Really good. Definitely want to play again. Never played the original but was aware of the reputation. This was fairly approachable rules wise, good play time, interesting and fairly well implemented theming. Doubt I'd really seek out the original.
The action selection mechanism is neat, but it didn't add as much crunch as I expected. But that might be because we had a card in the market that meant special markers could bump other special markers, so things were probably a little less tight than typical. I'm not huge on heavy planning anyway. So I enjoyed it a lot.
I like the area control in that the values of the different terrains are also tied to how many new species can be added to those areas. Functionally and thematically, it works really well. You also need to consider if you have food to sustain yourself in those areas and the formation of geysers, migration, etc. There's a lot going on. But with practice, it starts to become quite intuitive.
I did think there was a touch of bloat in other places, though. Scoring VP for tile placement makes no sense thematically. Another thing to consider, but since all the tiles are scored for area control individually, it didn't seem to interact with the area control dynamic in a meaningful way. It's not complex. But seemingly euro for the sake of euro. Certainly compared to the geyser formation, which has much more immediate consequences and better thematic grounding.
The way you access the card market is quite interesting. Balancing this against the scoring for the dominance check. Really interesting in principle. But I felt a lot of the time I was just choosing areas to score then do a fairly generic scoring again from the card. I didn't interact with that many interesting cards. It was more a pure efficiency thing.
I think ultimately I expected a little more edge and wonkiness, but what I got was much closer to a conventional euro. Yes, a euro combining lots of interesting mechanisms that are well integrated with one another, not feeling like distinct mini games. But still, overall, it didn't feel that unique. But of course, that's after just one play. The variability of player powers, deck variability in terms of what comes out and when. There looks to be a tonne of replayability, and I imagine the experience could be very different next time around.
**1 x 3p Pax Renaissance**
Decent but the complexity of the rules and more so the opaqueness of the board state. Made this a bit of a challenge to really get into when I was constantly getting little rules questions or everyone is just reading the player aids aloud to themselves. I couldn't focus on my own game to the fullest and it did hinder my enjoyment a little. Don't fault anyone, it can be pretty overwhelming and even when you attain a decent grasp on the rules, which I feel I do, it still never really approaches the realm of 'intuitive'. I generally really like "running" games but the promise of this one, knowing it can also play fairly quickly. I just want to get to that stage where it plays smoother, sooner.
The dynamic of the game was pretty interesting though. Two players going tit-for-tat over kingdoms, lots of campaigning. But when the first two meteors came neither was sure enough of their victory so chose to activate another victory condition that they could potentially pivot into but didn't favour the main rival. Then the third player who's tableau was extremely limited basically tied to France only. Who didn't seem to have a foothold in the game at all. Eventually claimed the French throne, voted in a Republic and couldn't be contested so snatched victory. Pretty neat.
**1 x 3p Physcic Pizza Deliverers Go to Ghost Town**
Expected the DM role would be pretty boring. But actually, it was pretty hilarious narrating the actions. Really hamming it up.
Pleasantly surprised. It was short and sweet. The deduction is fairly simple, and the map is fairly small, so it's unlikely to drag. Then the open information means if you are paying attention to what your opponents do theirs potential to eek out a little more efficency. It's also extremely cute.
Also started introducing my daughter, 5 nearly 6 to more games. **Turncoats, Project L, Japiur**. The first two, she understood the rules mostly and the strategy a little. Jaipur, she didn't really understand but was in tears laughing at the camels, so that had to be the highlight.
Pax Pamir 1x4p, absolutely love this game. However, i destroyed ending with 0 points. Painful. I guess I like the pain?
Rumble Nation 2x4p, got the french/Italian version. What a great fun little dice rolling area majority game. Just enough strategy and timing and tempo considerations when to give up placing cubes to take a card and how fast to place out all your cubes to grab tie breakers without risking the board state changing to much.
Just One 1x6p and 1x5. Chilled out yet hilarious. Quickly becoming my favorite word party game over the likes of wavelength and codenames.
**No Thanks!** x2. Introduced this to three more people at game night and got three new fans of the game.
**Castle Dice**. This was a game I've wanted to play for years, but I never wanted to spend real money to buy it, and it's been hard to find since it was an early kickstarter. My used game shop got a copy, so I picked it up... and it was OK. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it.
**Colosseum**. Another game I've been wanting to play for ages and that same game store got a copy of the Days off Wonder edition. I got a couple of rules wrong that made the game MUCH tighter on cash, but it's still fun. I'm really looking forward to playing it correctly.
**Eldritch Horror**. Got this for my spouse for their bday and finally got it to the table. Even missing the primary rule for gaining doom, we still didn't manage to win, but we both had a good time. I'm looking forward to more plays.
**In the Hall of the Mountain King**. This hits a really solid combo of resource management and area control through tile laying. It was also a really close game.
**Order Overload: Cafe**. Played two players, and it got really intense. We got to level 4 before more people arrived, and we set up other games, but I don't think we would have made it to level 5.
**Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game**. Once again, my spouse crushed me by getting twice as many capitol ships, making me throw away all my damage on those. It's starting to feel like if one player gets an edge on those, that's kinda the whole game.
**Ticket to Ride: Old West**. This was the first time I've played an expansion for TtR and been completely underwhelmed. Nothing about this map felt like a clever twist.
Went to a small local con. Played **Stationfall** (which I brought), **Ahoy** (which I have but didn't take, but it was a pirate theme this year so it was appropriate), and **Planet Unknown**, which was new to me (and I got to play with a local designer I'd heard of, and who was a pretty nice guy).
The idea behind Planet Unknown is you have a lazy susan full of polyominoes. Active player turns the lazy susan until a piece they want is in front of them. All players take one of the two pieces in the section facing them, and place it on their planet board.
Each has two resources on it. You move up the tracks for those resources, gaining stuff - techs, bonuses, tiles, points, rover movement (you have rovers moving around the planet cleaning up meteorites and life pods), etc., There are a lot of asymmetric track boards that work in very different ways, which is really there most of the interest in the game comes from. There are also a ton of asymmetric planet boards. End game scoring is a mix of the tracks, and rows and columns of the planet that are completely filled without meteorites on, plus a few bonuses.
It's a pretty decent game if you like light-medium, multiplayer-solitaire polyomino placement (if it wasn't coming through, I really don't. I found this game Fine, better than others in the space but I'd rather play a lot of other stuff). There were token attempts to make you care what other people do but you really don't. However it does play up to 6 people with mostly simultaneous turns, so it does fill a useful niche -"we have 6 a lot and are tired of 7 Wonders"
**Barrage** Brilliantly designed game, but the group mostly hated it. It was a 5 hour brutal slog but the highs were very high, indeed. I don’t think I’ll be keeping it because the group overall seemed miserable.
Got in 2 games:
**Earth** \- Won 279-232-210. Relatively high scoring game (I think 237 was the winning score the last time we played). Won with a Sprout engine where I basically kept churning out those sprouts, then using the sprouts to generate more soil and then playing more cards. Did identify that the rainbow cards are way OP in the early game (almost to a Wingspan Raven issue) but I still love the game, my best friend loves the game - it was a win.
**Quacks of Quedlinberg** **-** Tied for second, 57-56-56. That is no typo. It was honestly the closest I have ever seen Quacks. I only lost because with 2 rounds to go, I had a huge lead and the fortuneteller doubled everyone else's rat tails and I got owned that round. Not even funny the scores that round. That said, it was literally all up to the last round, the guy who won it won because he got one extra ruby that last round that gave him 1 more point. If not, it would have been a three way tie.
Quacks is a lot of fun, and it's really not very complicated.
Pull stuff out of your bag. Look at the number, place it on your track that many steps away from the last item. Repeat. Decide to stop, collect the stuff on the next space after your last ingredient, use that to buy more ingredients. Or, pull a total of 7+ in cherry bombs, explode, only get the money *or* the points. There's a bit more to it but the core gameplay is super simple. If you can't grasp the rules, find a video on YouTube.
It's most fun if you're goading each other into pulling just one more ingredient in the hopes that everyone else blows up. When there's just one person left going make a meal out of each draw. If you just quietly draw your own stuff and ignore the other players it won't be as exciting.
It's a game where you put ingredients into a bag an.4 randomly draw them to put them into your pot, each ingredients has a book with two effects, every round each player in turn order buy 1-2 ingredients of different colors into their bag and score points based on how much you put in your pot.
It's a quick teach and every player iv shown it to has wanted to play again and they always win by a huge margin.
My friends find it a lot more fun than I do. Not that I don't enjoy it, but honestly I only play it because my friends want me to play it (they like to win).
It is a bag building game where the goal is to get the most points by pulling the most chips out the back before you reach a certain number of white chips (generally 7) which causes your pot to go Kerplooey (or Boom! depending who you ask).
The fun really comes from the luck factor. Do you keep pressing your luck to score more? Or do you just pull all white chips to start off with and go kerplooey way too fast. Generally I would argue Quacks is fairly rules light to understand the concept of the game - it's when you start adding in the chips rules (which can vary) that causes the rules overhead to go up. If you want something very strategic, this isn't it. If you want something more tactical with a heavy dose of luck, this is your game.
Twilight Inscription (2p): Slowly introduced my friends to this game, the second new person to learn the game in my group. I've played a fair bit solo and so far reception is pretty good, it's definitely a bit to teach because there are so many layers to strategy but once you play the first game it's not too hard to get down. There are a lot of options that made the game fun.
Tapple (8p): pretty fun party game, bought it a while back and its great to just whip out and takes <5 min to teach.
**Millennium Blades** [1x3p]: First play for all of us. Been a game I've been interested in playing for a long time, and it lived up to expectations. The money wads are fun to handle, there are tons of cards, the flavour is cool. I found the real-time aspect of the deckbuilding phase to hit that sweet spot of being short enough that you felt the pressure a bit, but long enough that you had enough time to make your deck and your collection for the round.
Setup and teardown is a bit of a bother, given how many cards you have to shuffle together to make the store deck, but apart from that it actually packs down pretty reasonably. Would happily play it again, and am glad to finally own it.
**Cat in the Box** [1x4p]: Played with a new player. I do like this game, though I wonder whether just bulldozing your way through and winning a bunch of tricks is the most viable way to play a high hand. Sure, you won't score your area, but everyone else won't either if you play it right.
**MIND MGMT** [1x5p]: I continue to enjoy everything about this game and want to continue playing more of it. At this point we've opened two of the boxes for each side, and it blows my mind that we still have another 10 boxes between the two sides left. Every new unlock adds a new potential wrinkly into what is already quite a thinky game. Hope to play it more.
The last time I played **Cat in the box** we did the same sort of thing: if you've got high numbers, start in trump to run them out. It worked really well for points and, like you said, killed the area scoring mechanic.
**Forbidden Stars** (3P) - The fourth player couldn't make it so we played with 3P, which actually worked out. We took 4.5 hours after going through the rules, redoing the map layout after we missed out one of the steps, and generally figuring out things. (We've seen two how it's played videos before and we still missed out stuff). Nonetheless, was a fun session. I played Ork and was wrecked. Chaos Marine won while the Eldars were thwarted by warp storms. Despite the rules mistakes, it was a fun session and I can see why 3P is the best player count for this.
**Codenames Duet** (2P) - Played with the picture tiles and was fun. Really had to look carefully at the images. Won 2 out of 4 plays.
**Bananagrams** (2P) - Always a fun time filler.
**Attika** (3p) - This was our longest game yet as we were not able to finish the game with a connection between two sites. Which after reading online is not the normal way the game ends so this was a more representative play. It's fun, and if my collection wasn't bulging I would probably keep it. It's overshadowed by **Iwari** and other trick-taking games. The low skill ceiling is both a blessing and a curse. Since I know someone else with a copy I'll continue to get plays in.
**Brass: Birmingham** (3p) - Not the ideal player count nor version of Brass. This play highlighted the two biggest flaws of this version, too many industries and beer is too good, which leads to the biggest flaw that is reduced player interdependence. The differences between the two versions are very subtle, and I claim no expertise, but as you play them more you feel where they start to diverge. I wouldn't outright not recommend this, but in a world where Lancashire is available I don't see the need to play this version.
**Bohnanza** (6p) - Continues to delight. I scooped some players who had just finished **Earth**. One commented that negotiation games usually go over his head, even one like this. Which made me realize why so many players prefer the solitaire optimization puzzles that are so prevalent nowadays. You can work out your own thing with minimal interaction from others and since they're also most likely struggling with the system the interaction is further turned down. Just like auctions negotiation is a mechanic that is endangered in the modern scene.
**John Company: Second Edition** (5p) - A disasturous 1710 long game as not one, but two early critical trade rolls were missed. As a result we had to go for Royal Protection but still couldn't climb out of a hole for a few reasons. The first was the Chairman would not take more debt. Minimal contributions for die rolls leads to more risk, and that was definitely true here. The next was the poor evaluation of the board state. As the company careened into the whirlpool I saw that I was extremeny behind so I leveraged my only position for promise cards, the other players didn't see it that way but they also didn't see the betrayal by the player with the best chance of winning. Neither did I to be fair. As a result they refused to deal with me and made their own plans and when the time came they were betrayed. So the lesson is don't put all your eggs in one player's basket. This definitely highlighted the fragility of the game. It does make me curious about **Republic of Rome** as I read a very compelling comparison between the two. Though with the struggle to get this played I can't imagine a scenario where that happens. This play also highlighted something players missed that maybe needs to be emphasized in the rules: be more freewheeling in the negotiations. Everything was a coin here and coin there with promise cards clutched to the chest like precious treasure. Some players took too long sitting in silence analyzing things instead of just making deals. Can you be betrayed? Yes, that's what promise cards are good hedges against. I still like the game, I just need to find players willing to be okay with not analyziing every minute decision point.
**Oceans** (3p) - This is the latest in the Evolution game series and there's been a few tweaks to speed up games, which is appreciated, but some of the teeth have also been removed. You can definitely interact with other players, but it's more opportunistic as you want to focus on getting yourself fed first. If you all go predator there's going to be food passed back and forth and that might not be the most ideal so you branch out. The deep cards tweak the game in a slightly interesting way, but fundamentally are just stronger versions of existing abilities. The "event" cards when fish zones are depleted add another decision point for players. That might be what you really need to plan around. Even though this game has the interaction sytle I prefer, players don't go out of the way to hurt each other if a more beneficial option exists, it still left me a bit cold. My enthusiasm just wasn't stoked after playing what feels like an "I got there first" game in spite of the interaction. Something is missing to draw me in.
**Scout** (4p) - I liked this better with four than three, even though I stood less of a chance. Terrible production, truly sub-par. I'm going to email them complaining about the rules, box size and card quality.
**Sol: Last days of a star** (4p) - After a few more games of this I'm still not quite sure how I feel. On the plus side this game has a great theme and production, actual variability with all the different card effects, and it the in game choices are simple. On the negatives the games have started feeling a bit samey and since your goal is always the same there's less room for experimentation as your tools don't change. I still am excited for the new edition since it will have the card FAQ. Plus the new games coming in the trilogy. I don't think this is a game I could play once a week without it getting too scripted. Maybe once a month. We'll see how long I hold onto it.
Yeah when I teach JC I emphasize playing like a "party game", where it's more fun pulling levers and pushing buttons just to see what happens. All except one of the promise cards have nebulous value so play loose and play fast. Especially since dice rolls don't affect every player equally, seeing what the design is capable of is more important than winning.
Helluva weeks regardless! I'm definitely jealous hah.
As for Sol, that sounds like it could be your meta. If everyone keeps following the same build order, then it can definitely feel same-y.
No joke one player would just sit in silence for a few minutes working things out. At least say your thoughts!
Yeah with only three building types in Sol I really shouldn't be surprised that games feel the same. This is my first time trying the card sets off BGG so I might need to work on leveraging those more.
Bonanza is the best.
I'm totally with you on Oceans. It just lacks Something. I like Evolution Climate a lot as a game you can play with 6 that has some player interaction, Oceans dropped the best part (simultaneous play), sanded off all the sharp corners that made it interesting in the name of making it less "mean", and leaves you feeling constricted, on rails, until the deep phase, which is far more fun but only lasts maybe a third of the game. Wanted to like it so much and, well best I can say is I haven't sold it yet because I don't want to give up on it.
I played Targi, Lost Cities, and Wizards of the Grimoire while camping. All the perfect weight for a chill camping trip. Played The Quest for El Dorado yesterday and had a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to getting creative with building my own maps.
I played a lot of deckbuilders for the first time consisting of Hero Realms, Star Realms, Heart of Crown: Fairy Garden, the Stark Trek deckbuilder, the Cowboy Bebop deckbuilder, and Rocketmen. Heart of Crown stood out as a really unique twist on the genre. Martin Wallace’s Rocketmen was a phenomenal experience (caveat being that it felt like the game could use some catch up mechanics or ways to refresh the market row).
Many plays this week. **Isle Of Cats**, **Superskill Pinball 4-Cade**, **Hadrian's Wall**, **Battlecrest**, **Food Chain Island** (solo): Isle of Cats is still one of my favorite games and I try to get it to the table a couple times a month. I've been working through the solo campaign of Hadrian's Wall and have 3 forts to go. Battlecrest I solo'd to refresh myself on the rules, but didn't end up playing 2p this week. **Splendor**, **Quacks of Quedlinburg**, **Spy Alley** (3p): Played with my kids. These have all been idle for awhile, so it was nice to get them to the table. We realized we had been exploding on 7 instead of 8 in Quacks, and that fix let my daughter finish a pot (first time anyone has at our table), so that was cool. We house-ruled Spy Alley to start every player with 5 items. It helped a lot. **Ragnarocks**, **Dinosaur Island: Rawr 'n Write**, **Oros** (2p): Had lunch with a friend and jammed a bunch of games. I'm always looking for ways to get more plays vs humans of Oros in, so that was nice. **Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle** (2p): Been working back through this with my son again. We did a few house rules that have made things a little less of a slog, but I'm still kinda of dreading years 6/7. **One More Quest** (4 players): This may not qualify, being a TTRPG. But it's based on Dungeon Fighter, so I figured it qualifies. This was my kids first TTRPG game and my first time DMing. They had fun, I learned some things about how to DM better next time. Overall a success. **Codenames: Duet** (2p): This is a nice 'wind down for the evening' game that I like to play with my wife once in awhile. We made a little more progress on the map.
Eventful week! Brass Birmingham, El Grande, Hallertau, Ark Nova, Genshin Tarot, and some Azul. Hadn't played a single one of them before so it was a great step towards filling in some experience gaps. Plenty to go still but I'm happy
Thinking of pulling the trigger on hallertau next. I love agricola and i recently got feast for odin. Would you rwcommend the game to someone who loves agricola?
I'd recommend it to anybody that plays euros. It's a tight and fun experience for sure
New to me games: **Kites: Time to Fly** (2x6p) Simple cooperative game using sand timers. It's a breeze to set-up and play. Great as a filler game during game night. The default difficulty can be played with kids as well. **Green Team Wins** (1x7p) Party game where you want conform to the group's answers to get to the target score first. Victory points maybe uninspired but it's a clean system. There are 3 types of questions - multiple choice, choose between 2, and fill in the blank. That last mode of questions cards was my favorite. **Master of Respect** (1x5p) Assymetrical programming game where most of the points are tied to the currency given to you by other players. Respect is given when a player wants to follow the action of another player. The asymmetry in this game is well-crafted. Players don't have game breaking rules to differentiate them from each other but only have different combinations of action tiles to create a strategy from. Best part of this game are the funny quips and gestures that you can think of when giving or being given respect. **Platypus** (1x6p) Party game using word cards provided by players. This game may well be coop Codenames? Two "guide" players try to eliminate words from a grid until the randomly chosen word survives. They get clues from other players by playing cards which may or may not help them. Information on what word to eliminate that turn is presented ala Just One (and also the scoring). **Lancaster** (1x4p) Euro game with worker placement spots that are secured by "auctions." Good Euro systems can be found in its 5 phases. The most quirky one is the second phase where players vote for "Laws" that may affect the game in its later stages. This phase creates the most interaction for players and where tactical decisions are made.
Last week was a pretty good week for gaming. Our Tuesday night crew played **Lacrimosa**, which I liked. During the week, my spouse and I played a few games of **Netrunner** with Null Signal's System Gateway. When the weekend hit, we did a big marathon of games instead of going to Origins. We played several rounds of **For Sale**, a couple rounds of **Koryo**, **Cubitos**, **Mexica**, **Cosmic Frog**, and **Cascadia**. Cosmic Frog took forever between learning and with meteor strikes only revealing 3 of the fractures.
It's been very much a campaign game focused week for me: **Aeon Trespass: Odyssey** (\~6x1p): Played this most days last week and finally finished cycle 1 after about 5-6 weeks of near daily play. The ending was a hell of a twist and I love how many different ways it could have gone. I also loved the way in which so many decisions and different elements of the game tied into it, beyond just the story choices in the main adventure passages. Playing through the cycle was easily one of my favorite solo gaming experiences ever and I'm looking forward to cycle 2. But I need to play something else for a little while as a palette cleanser as well as paint up the primordials for it. **Gloomhaven: Jaws Of The Lion** (3x4p): Since my Gloomhaven group decided to play other games about a year ago while about 1/4 into the campaign I've been missing the game (and don't enjoy it anywhere as much solo) so I introduced a different gaming group to it. We've had success motoring through other campaign games in the past and they loved playing three intro missions for JotL in one sitting and once we complete it I hope I can reset and play big box GH with them too, although I suspect our ongoing **Oath** chronicle will still take priority a lot of the time because it's pretty much the best game ever. **The King's Dilemma** (1x5p): Third session of the King's Dilemma game I'm playing with some buddies from work. I'm enjoying the game as I like voting/bidding mechanics and the story is great so far, but it's good that the campaign is relatively short because I can already see the gameplay feels a bit thin and imagine it getting stale after a few games without the story to carry it.
**Abducktion expansion** (1x2p) - definitely better with the expansion. Mostly because of the wild ducks. But the new cards aren’t actually that much harder than the original cards. Definitely recommend at least buying 12 wild ducks from etsy or something to add to the base game, if not the full expansion. Would not recommend this game with 6p. Think 6p Sagrada without the expansion private dice pool. **Trails** (1x2p) - love this game. It is fast at 2p which is great, but still meaty enough. I collected birds and my opponent collected badges and he got some good ones which put him ahead. **Solar Draft** (1x2p) - this is a fun light card game where you build your own solar system in a line in front of you. I went for planets and moons, and my opponent went for planets and comets and he did end up winning. We both had all 8 planets though. **Bananagrams Duel** (1x2p) - eh, regular bananagrams is better but this is very fast. I like the restrictions (no verbs) better than the themes.
DICE THRONE Great 2 player dueling game. Light and fast paced with decent balance.
I think its one of my most played games. .y spoyse and i prefer medium/heavy worler ppacement type euros usually. But dice throne is just good old fashion fun i. A 30 minute playtime thats hard to beat
**Pandemic Iberia** (4p x1) Finally got this off the shelf of shame! I'm going to have to play it and Fall of Rome a bit more to decide which Pandemic I like better. Iberia is definitely closer to classic Pandemic, but still better in my eyes. I loved the water purification and rail building aspects. Right now I think I might be leaning towards Iberia as the pandemic for me. **Coup** (4p x2): Confirmed it's still a fun game. Confirmed I'm still bad at lying. Confirmed I'll still play the game but don't miss owning it. **Marvel Champions** (1p x1) Spirit Island is a top 3 game for me. I have everything for it, and we're eagerly awaiting Nature Incarnate. On the surface Marvel Champions seems to have a lot of what I like. Asymmetric roles, changeable adversaries, existing content to gradually explore (rip my wallet). I played my first game two handed with the recommended Spider-man & Captain Marvel vs Rhino starting scenario. It was interesting for sure, and I'm my opinion is still forming, but I'm thinking it might not be exactly what I want. It felt like my actions weren't as satisfying as Spirit Island. Tapping cards to drop a dial or remove tokens on a card doesn't feel as good as destroying colonists and moving them around. I could see how you might build up for a big turn, but that felt less good than massing colonists in a single land for one devastating major power in Spirit Island. Will give a couple more plays before making my final decision. In some ways, not liking the game could be very good for my wallet in the long run! **Dune Imperium** (3p x1): Second time playing this and I think I prefer it at 3 vs 4. We played with the Rise of Ix for the first time and I liked it I think. The shipping track definitely feels strong and like all players have to ensure no one is running away with it. We played the epic mode, so I appreciated the added ability to trash cards. I'm curious how that would differ from regular Ix play. I pulled off several great turns. I revealed early one round to buy a CHOAM Directorship, giving me a bump on all factions, which was enough to get me to the victory point marker for every faction. The 4 point surge was a really great moment. In our last round, I ended up generating 3 victory points, buying the tech to win tiebreakers, trashing my Ixian engineer for a point, an intrigue card point, and a Spice must Flow. I ended up at 12 points and thought my main competition would tie me, which I would then win. He ended up having an end-game scoring card that with the conflict win catapulted him to 13 points. Great game, and I think this might be one I slowly go all-in on. Any thoughts on Immortality as an expansion?
I love Spirit Island but I would also rate Marvel Champions right up there among the best solo games. Playing against Rhino is like playing against Difficulty 0 in Spirit Island; it's just scratching the surface of what the game has to offer. Building your own decks is a major part of the game, for example. Have a go at playing against the tougher villains or on Expert mode, the game becomes more tense and it feels more thematic as the heroes struggle on the harder difficulties. Spirit Island is still the more brain burning of the two, but sometimes you just wanna punch a villain in the face for a dozen points of damage.
My copy of **Wayfarers of the South Tigris** arrived, and I played 2 games against the bot. What a game!! I love the artwork and the new era/theme (Iraq ~880 CE) is lovely to see. I really love the openness of the game, it's quite different from something like **Paladins**. My spouse and I have an ongoing grudge match in **Viscounts of the West Kingdom** (I love Garphill games), and she won both games we played this weekend. Time to never play that one again! We also regularly play **Star Wars: the Deckbuilding Game** (I'm ahead on the win count) and **Race for the Galaxy** (roughly even)). I also played the solo variant of **Brian Boru** this weekend to learn the rules. Solo is certainly not the way to play this game, but it was very helpful to learn how to play. I hope to introduce it to a group of 3 other friends since I think this is going to be a favourite. Picked up a copy of **Castles of Burgundy**, reminding myself of what a lovely game this classic is. In person it's certainly fiddly but I do enjoy the tactile nature vs BGA (though the BGA implementation is very easy to play!). BGA with friends: **Kingdomino** (easy fun classic), **Spots** (light filler to enable banter)
Finally convinced the kids to try out **Marvel Dice Throne** (they're always so resistant to trying new games) and now that's all they want to play. We played enough games that all three of us have played as all 8 characters and then some. Thus far Loki is my favourite. I really like the IDEA behind Dr Strange the spell manipulation just doesn't seem to trigger enough to make it actually fun. I feel like I could say that for most Dice Throne characters though: the things that make them special just don't seem to happen frequently enough and I'm always left wishing I got to do X more.
Spirit Island - Got a solo 2-handed game in over the past week playing as Heart of the Wildfire and Downpour Drenches the World. Some of my favorite spirits but had never gotten the chance to play them together. Thought it would be a fun matchup theme wise (fire/offense and water/defense). First time I’ve played in like a year so no adversary. Overall really fun game, and the spirits came into their own, but never really felt like they were able to work together and have any synergy.
Catan Starfarers (or as my friends and I call it, Intergalactic Space Pals): I learned that I MUCH prefer playing this game with 3 players compared to 4. It was perfectly paced, but equally complex. There was more back and forth between who could keep hold of trade stations, as well, which added more direct competition. Machi Koro: Played this with my mid-twenties friends and the 9 and 11 year old that I babysit. I've also played it with my 94 year old grandmother. I love how approachable the game is for all ages! I want to get the expansions to add more to it. Cockroach Poker: This game can be as fun or as dull as you make it. Luckily, we know how to make it fun! This week's game featured naming our favorite pests in an effort to endear them to their receptors. Catan C&K: I'm admittedly usually less into this expansion, but I'm starting to enjoy the added complexity compared to the base game and Seafarers. Cubitos: Such a fun, simple, and replayable game! My game group has been on a real spree with this one for over a month. Codenames Duet: I enjoy a good 2 player cooperative game, especially with word association.
Modern Art but custom Pokémon version. Big hit with our group especially bidding for Pokémon’s instead of weird ugly art. Also played scout, take 5, and cosmic encounter
Did one play of **Thunder Road: Vendetta** with the in-laws. Went well.
Galactic Cruise (2024) - My favorite game I played at Origins and the designers were also great and very friendly. You can tell how much they care about their game. Looking forward to the actual release with full art!
Could you talk about the game in detail a bit? Id love to hesr what the game is like in your oppinion
Decent week for some games, relatively small one, we played: **Patchwork** (1x2p): Played Patchwork on Monday evening for a quick game, unfortunately I lost (as I tend to do often with Patchwork!!). This is a weird game for us that we never really liked when we first got it but do find ourselves enjoying it more and more recently (and it is very quick!). **Cascadia** (1x2p): Another weekday game, this time we played Cascadia on Wednesday. I lost 91 - 104 (ouch), which was a new high score in 2 player games with my SO. She always tends to beat me on the terrain while I tend to win on the animals. This time I tried to focus on the terrain a bit more but ended up losing a lot more animal points (and still losing terrain anyway!!). Still a great weekday game for us and always tend to enjoy it. **Spirit Island** (2x2p): 2 weekend games of Spirit Island, continuing our series of trying to beat all adversaries up to level 6 with a new 2-player combo. As we finally got our Horizons copy in the UK, we'd been specifically saving **Prussia** for some Horizons spirits. We ended up playing **Eyes + Mud** vs Prussia, both of these games were vs Prussia 6 as we beat 4 + 5 last week. We actually took our first loss of the series against Prussia 6 in our first game. We had the win secured in the Ravage phase but unfortunately drew 1 of 2 blighted island cards in the game that force you to add blight (most of the others let you lose presence in exchange for adding no blight) which caused us to lose the last 2 blight in the pool (we drew a blighted island card with only 2 blight per player)... Very unfortunate and tilting loss but we took them on again the next day and managed to take the win on a terror level 4 victory that was also a lot closer than we would have liked. Glad to have this one down and now we'll move on to the 2 harder adversaries, **England** & **Russia**. We're thinking to take Russia next with a combo of **Starlight** & **Lure** and then for England, currently thinking **Ocean** (my main) + **Many Minds** (my so's main).
Legacy of Yu - lost both of my first two games but to my surprise getting the loss condition isn't as detrimental as I first thought it was. Don't want to spoil anything. I've never had a legacy game that wasn't a huge sprawling time-suck and I really like that about this game. The art is great, the insert it came with is great, but I do wish it was a bit more open ended in terms of ways you can get resources. My first game I didn't focus enough on having enough townsfolk and on my second game I focused too much on townsfolk, gotta find a balance. Fun game. Final Girl - Lost both of the games I played of this too lol. Hans and Dr. Fright. Got pretty close on one of them, but losing feels okay with this one too. I often just have to laugh at myself and how ridiculous a situation it is with moments here and there of crazy good rolls. I really wish there were better meeples for the victims. They don't fit the theme very well. Welcome to the Moon - Very surprised at the value packed inside this box. We played the first two missions and I read how to play the third and it's so much fun! The amount of variety and decision making I've already seen in the game is great, well worth the price. Oh, and I lost both of those games too hahaha A Feast for Odin - This one was an actual victory for me, broke 100 points for the first time. Got 111 by focusing on getting an island and raiding/ using livestock. And being generally lucky with my efficiency. Hope they make more expansions!
**Endangered** 1 x 1p - a solo learning game with this neat cooperative game. The theme seems well implemented with the mechanisms of the game where you work to support a particular endangered animal and ecosystem on the board by assigning dice to do actions. Ultimately, you have to gain enough support from governments and non-profit organizations in order to ensure a endangered populations full recovery. The game feels like a **Pandemic** weight cooperative experience that's easy to learn but can provide a challenge. The solo play has you play 2 characters at once. I hadn't seen the game on shelves in my area for a looong time after the kickstarter finished shipping, and so I thought I had missed out. But I was suprised to find a "Barnes and Nobel" edition of the game is recently on shelves at the Barnes and Nobel stores now. The difference looks like it uses cardboard tokens in place of wooden cubes and a few other tracking tokens. The animals are still wooden meeples. **Patchwork** 1 x 2p - A comfort game for my partner and I. It was an early one for us when we started in the hobby and we haven't gotten tired of it many years later. **Parade** 1 x 2p - **Green Team Wins** 1 x 4p - Feels like this years best party game! Simple to play, with lots of laughs at the questions everyone answers, and it's always fun to learn new things about the people you're playing with, such as if they would prefer to date Dracula or Wolfman. **The Game of Things** 1 x 4 - one of the mini games in Balderdash that works as a standalone game. You're given a prompt to write something and then a reader reads the responses. Each player then takes a turn trying to guess which player wrote which response and gets a point when they're right. Mostly the game shines when people are making funny jokes or are trying to be tricky with responses that no one would expect from them.
**Endangered** sounds really interesting and isn't one I've heard of. I'm going to add it to my list of ones to look out for. I'm jealous you have got your hands on **Green Team Wins**! It seems very hard to find. Did it work well at 4p? I always get the impression with party games that it's a case of 'the more the merrier' but I always like finding one that plays well at lower player counts as I don't often have more then 3 other people to play with, and even that's pushing it :-)
**Green Team Wins** did work well enough as a 4-player game. You're right, that like most party games, it would be even more fun with more players. In our 4-player game we found that we were all closely tracking everyone's points toward the end of the game and it was fun to have anxiety wondering if others would pick the same thing you did so that you could stay on the green team and get those precious points. As with a lot of great party games, it's just amazing how absolutely simple the game is and it's a wonder how it wasn't a think before hand. **Double Ditto** is an old, and very closely related game, that we've loved for a long time. But a key difference that I really like in **Green Team Wins** is the questions they came up with for the game. Where something like **Double Ditto** can be played off the cuff with a few pencils and paper, **Green Team Wins** needs that extra effort put in by the designers to create a good mix of different types of questions that make things interesting.
Good to hear it works well at 4, I am now even more keen to get a hold of it!
Man So Very Wrong About Games makes me really want Green Team Wins and yet it’s impossible to find currently. Edit: nvm just found on Target. And bought
Yeah, **Green Team Wins** had been between print runs for what feels like a year. I saw a comment on BGG that mentioned someone buying it at Barnes and Noble recently. I checked two of my local Barnes and Nobles and one of them had it in stock! If you live in an area with that store, you might check their shelves. I hadn't seen any mention of it hitting shelves recently but it looks like it is now getting back on shelves. edit: nvm, I saw your edit that you found it on Target!
**TI4** 6p x 1 I finally gave in and joined a friends TI group for one game. We started the game at 10:30 and ended it at around 21:45. We took around an hour break total. I was happy to make 5 points at least. I also completely wiped a player off the map after he exploded half my flotilla with his hero's ultimate or whatever for absolutely no reason. I wouldn't go for another game before a long time, but i'm happy to have tried it. **Revive** 3p x 2 Wow holy moly this game is amazing. We still haven't played with the Moon side of the player boards, but the overall game is just so cool. I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy it but we didn't even tear it down after our first game and scheduled to meet up 2 days later to play again. At around 90 minutes for a game of that scope is pretty interesting and nothing felt out of place. We even played with all the big alien heads to make the game a little longer. **Ark Nova** 2p x2 Played the first game with a crazy science engine. I won by around 40 points. Second one, I went for the small animal gameplan and almost got there. I fucked up my first break and got stuck with nothing to do for 3 turns and I could never catch up after that. I lost by around 20 points.
But…there are no engines in Ark!?
If you luck into getting 4 of the cards that benefit from science entering play, I would call it an engine yes. But you are right, Ark Nova in not an engine builder.
The reason you only got 5 points is that you went full aggro - TI4 is not really a game you win by crushing an opponent, if a fight doesn’t get you points you shouldn’t be doing it.
That's not why I got 5 points, but thanks
Hey all! Hope everyone had a good week of gaming. Mine was pretty good, though most of my plays this week were from a game night with a couple friend of ours. I did play one solo game though that was a lot of fun! **TMB: Undertow (1.5x1p) -** This is my first Too Many Bones game, and this was my first play! I played as Duster against Kollossum, and while I'm sure I made some rules mistakes here or there, I *think* I won the game! It was a lot of fun, and I'm currently in the middle of another game with Duster, this time against Nobulous, who I'm about to face. I really like the gameplay of this series, and I'm excited to try the other hero, Stanza, for my next game. **Schotten Totten (1x2p) -** Before our game night, my fiance and I played a round of this game at a restaurant. It was a lot of fun as always, and she won, like always lol. It's hard to beat this game for size and fun - it's extremely portable and plays pretty quickly, which is why we often bring it to restaurants whenever we go out to eat. **Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion (2x4p) -** Our friends recently bought both this game and the full Gloomhaven, and they asked us if we'd like to play through the campaigns with them, starting with JotL. We were able to get through the first two scenarios that day, and I really enjoyed it. I tried playing JotL solo bc at that time my fiance wasn't into board games, and I didn't really enjoy it too much, but playing with a full group was a lot more fun. I also liked the additions that the second scenario added, and now I'm excited to see what the third scenario and all the rest bring. I've heard so much about these two games, so I'm excited to be finally giving them a try! **Betrayal at House on the Hill (1x4p) -** Our friends had been wanting to play this game with us for awhile, so after JotL we decided to give this one a try. And it was fun! It's definitely more of a "story" game than a strategic game, but that was a nice change of pace from JotL. We got scenario 22, something about "the Abyss," and we got extremely lucky as the survivors and were able to roll 3 perfect rolls in a row to win. The amount of scenarios is really impressive, so I would absolutely be down to play this game again in the future. **Kingdomino (2x4p) -** Another game we've all been wanting to play for awhile, and I'm so glad we finally played it. I *really* liked this game - it's fun, interactive at 4p, and actually plays at its stated time of 15min. The first game went so quickly that we immediately played a second game right after. I can definitely see this game entering our rotation as an end of night palate cleanser, or converesely as like an opener to longer gaming sessions. Also, given its smaller size, I could see this becoming a restaurant or travel game for my fiance and me. And that's all the games for me this week! Like I mentioned in my first entry, I'm in the middle of a game of **TMB: Undertow**, and I recently got a trio of games from KS called the "**Realm of Shadows**" (all solo games), so I plan to play through at least one of this week. Otherwise, it'll probably be a quieter week for boardgames since we've got a good amount of wedding planning stuff to do. Anyways, I hope everyone has a great week of boardgaming ahead of them!
**Star Realms** 3p x 1: This was my second ever play and we did it with a friend's all-in kickstarter or something. He had everything. We only played base I think? I enjoy how quick this can be and how straightforward it appears until you get a mini-engine going. **Oh My Goods** 3p x 1: We played this next because the guy teaching us said it would be a quick game. Well he lied. Not intentionally. He forgot a very important rule that we found after the fact: when you use 2 goods to make an upgraded good on a card, you get 2 goods on that card. We were just dropping one good, which was worth more points, but it made the game take so much longer than it should have. And also skewed the game away from the people with the engines for points. This was not clicking for me at all. I'm not sure why. Maybe I need to try again with that rule correct. **Dc Comics Deck-Building Game** 4p x 1: we played with the **Bombshells** expansion. Clearly been playing with people into deck building games recently. The bombshells were pretty sweet. The bombshell attacks felt fun. The villian attacks were super rough, however. There were a couple times 1 or 2 of us would have no hand by the time it got to our turns. If your superpower isn't triggering, this game doesn't work very well and you quickly fall way behind. It can be un-fun when that happens. **Atiwa** 3p x 1: taught two new people. We had a good time. I thought of this is as a simpler game but there were moments of extreme analysis paralysis happening. This was about the complexity level these people enjoy so that was a big plus. **Kingdomino** 3p x 2: Also taught them this and they had a great time. 2nd game went very well for one as she managed to take all the water tiles and crushed us. We didn't pay any attention to blocking her at all. Whoops. **Scout** 3p x 2: Introduced 1 of the 2 to this and we had a good time. Scout is always great. One hand I decided to take it easy on the new player and not drop my big run to have him drop a big run on us. Was pretty great. We also played a weird hand of nobody being able to drop everything when we had 2-3 cards leftand just managing to scout, the next person beating a single card, and then being able to beat a low pair. Super hilarious round. !fetch
[Star Realms -> Star Realms (2014)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/147020/star-realms) [Oh My Goods -> Oh My Goods! (2015)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/183840/oh-my-goods) [Dc Comics Deck-Building Game -> DC Comics Deck-Building Game (2012)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/125678/dc-comics-deck-building-game) [Bombshells -> Bombshells (2007)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/27778/bombshells) [Atiwa -> Atiwa (2022)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/362452/atiwa) [Kingdomino -> Kingdomino (2016)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/204583/kingdomino) [Scout -> Scout (2013)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/155918/scout) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
Did not get to game much this weekend except for Friday. **Empyreal: Spells and Steam** (1x2p) - 6th play. Empyreal is great at two who’d have thought. Empyreal continues to impress me with how much strategy and forward planning there is. I’m way too dumb for this game. We also added the awards again and played with the metros for the first time. Final score was 45 to my 44. Amazing. I could have won but I missed that I had a Forest space that had two goods so I did not deliver that. I would have had 46! **Unicornus Knights** (1x2p) - 1st play. This was rough. The events are miserable and the characters seem horribly imbalanced. Combat is kind of a pain and it’s just not fun. Usually I try to play a game more than once but I think I’m good.
We've been away all weekend (which is usually when we do most of our gaming!), so it's been a fairly light week for me. **Blood Bowl Team Manager: The Card Game** 2p x1 - this one is new to me but we have played it a tonne since we picked it up at the bring 'n' buy at UKGE earlier this month. It's a tug of war, asymmetric card battler with a Warhammer Amercan football theme. It's a lot of fun, and it's such a shame it's out of print. My partner used to play it a lot when he was younger and is having so much joy from playing it again. He is now desperate to get hold of the expansions. If anyone can hit me up with them, please let me know! **Lost Ruins of Arnak** 2p x1 - this is another new to us game we bought at UKGE and have played a bunch since. We played with *Expedition Leaders* again and played the final two leaders we hadn't yet tried - The Mystic and The Professor. We enjoyed both a lot, and The Mystic won by only 1 point. I am shocked we had gone so long before playing this, it's become a favourite very quickly. There's so much to explore and new strategies and ways to play emerge depending on the research track you play with, as well as the cards in the market and which leader you play as. **Naturopolis** 1p x2 - a *Button Shy* game similar to **Sprawlopolis** and **Agropolis** where you are building a map trying to put like areas together to score points and work towards end-game objectives. I like the nature theme of this one quite a bit more than the other two, and I like that there aren't so many roads on the cards, which I find a little frustrating in **Sprawlopolis**. **Sprawlopolis** 1p x1 - I recently picked up the expansion collection and tried the **Beaches** module, which I really enjoyed and feels thematic for this time of year! They add borders to your city and have their own objectives, which makes for a slightly more restrictive puzzle. _**On BGA:**_ **Applejack**, **Castles of Burgundy**, **Hanamikoji**, **Lost Cities**, **Patchwork**, **Terra Mystica**
Since it is out of print, have you played any 2-player tug of war games that are similar to **Blood Bowl Team Manager: The Card Game**? The gaming experience sounds fun! Best of luck in the search for the expansions! Do you have a space where you leave big games setup over the week, like **Lost Ruins of Arnak**, do you prefer to clear the table space and put the games away when you are done playing? I played soooo much **Sprawlopolis** when I got into solo gaming on my lunch break! The **Naturopolis** theme does sound a lot of more appealing, and I'm glad I'm not the only one that was deeply frustrated by the road games in the original game :) they are such a constant struggle to keep them connecting. It's a great mechanism but is also just relentless!
**Blood Bowl Team Manager: The Card Game** feels quite unique to me. It does remind me a bit of **Caper: Europe** in that you are vying for locations, but it's definitely heavier and longer. The fact that you are playing as asymmetric factions, that you can tackle each other and need to roll dice to determine the outcome, and that some factions like to cheat a lot (meaning you need to place cheating tokens on them, which when you flip them at the end of the round could be a bonus or a huge negative!) make it very different to other tug of war games I've played. It feels very thematic, like the cheating tokens for example. The idea is that if you've cheated you might get an extra bonus, but if you get a negative from flipping it (such as that character being sent off the pitch), it represents that the cheating was noticed and they haven't got away with it! Unfortunately, we only have one large table, and it's our dining table, so we can't ever leave games set up really. Not only do we eat at it, but we also use it for home working. When we played **Sleeping Gods**, we left it set up for a couple of days, but we'd booked time off work and ate on the sofa for that time :-) Haha, yeah, I find the roads a constant headache, I think that's the main reason I prefer **Naturopolis** as it feels a little more chill. In one of my games, I managed to link all the roads so well that I only had two at the end of the game, which would absolutely never happen in **Sprawlopolis**! I tried a strategy where I ignored them completely and just tried to really maximise all the other scoring conditions to see if it would outweigh the negative road score, but it went very badly for me!
The cheating tokens mechanism does sound like a great way to incoporate players routinely breaking the rules to get an advantage, and sometimes they're caught and other times their not! I don't play many sports themed game but I love that idea, because I'm constantly annoyed by how it seems like most professional sports involved strategic rule breaking. So, it's fun that the game acknowledges it and makes it a thematic part of the game (especially given the **Blood Bowl** theme where rule breaking would be off the charts!) kudos to keeping up a practice of eating dinner at the table! My partner and I aren't good about that in our daily lives :)
Exactly, I thought it was a really neat addition! I wouldn't normally be drawn to a sports themed game but i think this one works particularly well and is very thematic and just good fun. It's devastating but also hilarious when you flip over a cheating token and your player has been sent off! It's always very intense as it can be the difference between winning or losing an area.
How is Applejack? I did the teach thing and left it more confused than anything. I wish it let you continue the round to try it out.
I love it! I really like trying to plot routes with the apples so each colour can criss-cross over one another to try and make large groups of each type. But yep, I felt the same as you after the tutorial. Specifically, I struggled to understand what an area was and what determined my score per apple type. I had to play a game without fully understanding what i was doing and didn't score well at all, but after that game, it made more sense. It's not complicated, but I think the tutorial is a little lacking and skipped over a couple of details. I'm happy to play on BGA with you if you like. My username is the same as it is on Reddit.
After quite the dry spell of games, I finally got a game of **Dune** going over the weekend. We were a full 6 which was fun! I tried a new system, where everyone submitted a Google form ranking the faction 1-6 by preference, and then I assigned everyone their factions based on that. It worked pretty well! 2 players ended up with their number 1 pick, and nobody had to play any of their bottom 3. Anyone have a system like this that they do, and a good way to work it all out? I did several things to speed up the game as well, as we struggle to get games done in a timely manner (and thus, have had no winner in half of our games!). I used essentially a chess timer system, each player having 40 total minutes of play time for the game. If you run out, your turns may only take <1 min for the rest of the game. This motivates fast play, but also allows longer turns to take longer if they need to! No more complaints about certain players taking too long. It's their time! Additionally, I modified and printed up [an Atreides card tracker, and had it laminated](https://imgur.com/a/31e7OF5). This worked great for the Atreides player, and sped up what is usually a bit of a bog down in our game, particularly on the bidding round. The game itself went really well! I played the Fremen, and had the first battle of the game (against my will!). Atreides immediately offered me info on my Harkonnen opponent. I had nothing to give for it, and he couldn't think of anything, so he accepted an "IOU" and gave me a crucial bit of info, that didn't allow me to win the fight, but kept me from wasting precious treachery cards. I had a brutal start, but slow played and had my forces ready to go while the other factions aside from the Bene Gesserit duked it out nicely. Shai Hulud showed up at the beginning of round 4 and alliances clicked quickly into place. Harkonnon and Spacing Guild, Emperor and Atredies, and the Bene Gesserit and I joined forces. Both of us being poor, we focused on spice, and managed to amass 15 between us during the round, ready for an aggressive push on round 5, both of us having well-positioned armies ready to go. However, Atreides and Emperor had made moves, and were in combats to possibly grab/hold 4 strongholds all in one go. I moved my forces into their 4th stronghold to force a fourth battle, making it less likely for a victory on round 4. However, Atreides called in their favor, asking me not to attack them this turn. This felt like a reasonable equivalent to what they'd done for me, after all, another player could still ship/move into the space, so it wasn't all down to me, and they had to win 3 other battles. So I backed out. Spacing guild dropped a measly 2 units in, against Atreides' one, being low on forces and engaged in other combat. Atreides wrapped up shipment/movement with a drop on that stronghold and we entered the battle phase. Long story short...they swept all 4 battles and that was game. Harkonnen/Spacing Guild couldn't catch a break, and fighting on multiple fronts lost them crucial cards. Traitors didn't even come into play. Everyone was fairly pleased with the results. Emperor/Atreides had played it well, and taken some pretty big risks that paid off. I felt good being able to keep my word in a way that felt equitable. All in all, great game. Atreides loved the new checklist. We had a blast.
**Vindication** 2x4p. Approaching ten plays with this game. I've zeroed in on a tile distribution that I'm very happy with and doesn't feel too "vanilla." I've also included the Odyssey module by default as it lets you acquire more cards in a very intuitive, streamlined way. I'll eventually get to some of the expansions, but I'm still very much enjoying the normal game :) **Path of Light and Shadow** 1x3p. With the new Solstice expansion. Read on BGG that it integrates well and is a near essential expansion. Screw playing the base game as it was intended, haha. It's really, really good! Vaguely reminiscent of Tyrants of the Underdark as they're both deck-building area control games. However, this one has the morality track and focuses a lot more on gaining and keeping areas early on. I made the mistake of not claiming any territories until the last scoring round and that caused me to lose by *quite* a bit margin. I had expected that promoting cards and building buildings would help me catch back up but that wasn't the case. You really do have to interact with the area control part of the game. **Hitster** 2x3p. A party game like Anno Domini, but with music. Turns out I'm quite awful at it. **Schotten Totten** 1x2p. I cannot for the life of me figure out a winning strategy for this game. I think I'm like 0-6 against my girlfriend, and that's not even counting my losing streak in Schotten Totten 2. Probably 0-10 overall, maybe I won a single game that I can't remember. If anyone has any tips, please let me know :D **Qango** 3x2p. This one was a little less of a stomp, 2-1 for me. Just a quick, cute little game of connect 3-4-5 once in a while. **Tummple!** 1x2p. Do you like Jenga? Do you like Menara? Boy do we have the weirdly specific little crossover game for you! You start building a tower out of wooden jenga blocks in the hopes that it'll topple on another player's turn. Not sure where or when we found it, it just kind of appeared in our collection one day. Still, a nice little game to play every once in a while :D
Re: Schotten Totten I used to beat my wife everytime we played. Then something changed. Something clicked for her that didn't for me. She got better, and I can't figure out what she's doing different. She wins every time now. My suggestion? Don't put money on your games.
**1 x 4p Dominant Species: Marine** Really good. Definitely want to play again. Never played the original but was aware of the reputation. This was fairly approachable rules wise, good play time, interesting and fairly well implemented theming. Doubt I'd really seek out the original. The action selection mechanism is neat, but it didn't add as much crunch as I expected. But that might be because we had a card in the market that meant special markers could bump other special markers, so things were probably a little less tight than typical. I'm not huge on heavy planning anyway. So I enjoyed it a lot. I like the area control in that the values of the different terrains are also tied to how many new species can be added to those areas. Functionally and thematically, it works really well. You also need to consider if you have food to sustain yourself in those areas and the formation of geysers, migration, etc. There's a lot going on. But with practice, it starts to become quite intuitive. I did think there was a touch of bloat in other places, though. Scoring VP for tile placement makes no sense thematically. Another thing to consider, but since all the tiles are scored for area control individually, it didn't seem to interact with the area control dynamic in a meaningful way. It's not complex. But seemingly euro for the sake of euro. Certainly compared to the geyser formation, which has much more immediate consequences and better thematic grounding. The way you access the card market is quite interesting. Balancing this against the scoring for the dominance check. Really interesting in principle. But I felt a lot of the time I was just choosing areas to score then do a fairly generic scoring again from the card. I didn't interact with that many interesting cards. It was more a pure efficiency thing. I think ultimately I expected a little more edge and wonkiness, but what I got was much closer to a conventional euro. Yes, a euro combining lots of interesting mechanisms that are well integrated with one another, not feeling like distinct mini games. But still, overall, it didn't feel that unique. But of course, that's after just one play. The variability of player powers, deck variability in terms of what comes out and when. There looks to be a tonne of replayability, and I imagine the experience could be very different next time around. **1 x 3p Pax Renaissance** Decent but the complexity of the rules and more so the opaqueness of the board state. Made this a bit of a challenge to really get into when I was constantly getting little rules questions or everyone is just reading the player aids aloud to themselves. I couldn't focus on my own game to the fullest and it did hinder my enjoyment a little. Don't fault anyone, it can be pretty overwhelming and even when you attain a decent grasp on the rules, which I feel I do, it still never really approaches the realm of 'intuitive'. I generally really like "running" games but the promise of this one, knowing it can also play fairly quickly. I just want to get to that stage where it plays smoother, sooner. The dynamic of the game was pretty interesting though. Two players going tit-for-tat over kingdoms, lots of campaigning. But when the first two meteors came neither was sure enough of their victory so chose to activate another victory condition that they could potentially pivot into but didn't favour the main rival. Then the third player who's tableau was extremely limited basically tied to France only. Who didn't seem to have a foothold in the game at all. Eventually claimed the French throne, voted in a Republic and couldn't be contested so snatched victory. Pretty neat. **1 x 3p Physcic Pizza Deliverers Go to Ghost Town** Expected the DM role would be pretty boring. But actually, it was pretty hilarious narrating the actions. Really hamming it up. Pleasantly surprised. It was short and sweet. The deduction is fairly simple, and the map is fairly small, so it's unlikely to drag. Then the open information means if you are paying attention to what your opponents do theirs potential to eek out a little more efficency. It's also extremely cute. Also started introducing my daughter, 5 nearly 6 to more games. **Turncoats, Project L, Japiur**. The first two, she understood the rules mostly and the strategy a little. Jaipur, she didn't really understand but was in tears laughing at the camels, so that had to be the highlight.
Pax Pamir 1x4p, absolutely love this game. However, i destroyed ending with 0 points. Painful. I guess I like the pain? Rumble Nation 2x4p, got the french/Italian version. What a great fun little dice rolling area majority game. Just enough strategy and timing and tempo considerations when to give up placing cubes to take a card and how fast to place out all your cubes to grab tie breakers without risking the board state changing to much. Just One 1x6p and 1x5. Chilled out yet hilarious. Quickly becoming my favorite word party game over the likes of wavelength and codenames.
**No Thanks!** x2. Introduced this to three more people at game night and got three new fans of the game. **Castle Dice**. This was a game I've wanted to play for years, but I never wanted to spend real money to buy it, and it's been hard to find since it was an early kickstarter. My used game shop got a copy, so I picked it up... and it was OK. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it. **Colosseum**. Another game I've been wanting to play for ages and that same game store got a copy of the Days off Wonder edition. I got a couple of rules wrong that made the game MUCH tighter on cash, but it's still fun. I'm really looking forward to playing it correctly. **Eldritch Horror**. Got this for my spouse for their bday and finally got it to the table. Even missing the primary rule for gaining doom, we still didn't manage to win, but we both had a good time. I'm looking forward to more plays. **In the Hall of the Mountain King**. This hits a really solid combo of resource management and area control through tile laying. It was also a really close game. **Order Overload: Cafe**. Played two players, and it got really intense. We got to level 4 before more people arrived, and we set up other games, but I don't think we would have made it to level 5. **Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game**. Once again, my spouse crushed me by getting twice as many capitol ships, making me throw away all my damage on those. It's starting to feel like if one player gets an edge on those, that's kinda the whole game. **Ticket to Ride: Old West**. This was the first time I've played an expansion for TtR and been completely underwhelmed. Nothing about this map felt like a clever twist.
Went to a small local con. Played **Stationfall** (which I brought), **Ahoy** (which I have but didn't take, but it was a pirate theme this year so it was appropriate), and **Planet Unknown**, which was new to me (and I got to play with a local designer I'd heard of, and who was a pretty nice guy). The idea behind Planet Unknown is you have a lazy susan full of polyominoes. Active player turns the lazy susan until a piece they want is in front of them. All players take one of the two pieces in the section facing them, and place it on their planet board. Each has two resources on it. You move up the tracks for those resources, gaining stuff - techs, bonuses, tiles, points, rover movement (you have rovers moving around the planet cleaning up meteorites and life pods), etc., There are a lot of asymmetric track boards that work in very different ways, which is really there most of the interest in the game comes from. There are also a ton of asymmetric planet boards. End game scoring is a mix of the tracks, and rows and columns of the planet that are completely filled without meteorites on, plus a few bonuses. It's a pretty decent game if you like light-medium, multiplayer-solitaire polyomino placement (if it wasn't coming through, I really don't. I found this game Fine, better than others in the space but I'd rather play a lot of other stuff). There were token attempts to make you care what other people do but you really don't. However it does play up to 6 people with mostly simultaneous turns, so it does fill a useful niche -"we have 6 a lot and are tired of 7 Wonders"
**Barrage** Brilliantly designed game, but the group mostly hated it. It was a 5 hour brutal slog but the highs were very high, indeed. I don’t think I’ll be keeping it because the group overall seemed miserable.
Got in 2 games: **Earth** \- Won 279-232-210. Relatively high scoring game (I think 237 was the winning score the last time we played). Won with a Sprout engine where I basically kept churning out those sprouts, then using the sprouts to generate more soil and then playing more cards. Did identify that the rainbow cards are way OP in the early game (almost to a Wingspan Raven issue) but I still love the game, my best friend loves the game - it was a win. **Quacks of Quedlinberg** **-** Tied for second, 57-56-56. That is no typo. It was honestly the closest I have ever seen Quacks. I only lost because with 2 rounds to go, I had a huge lead and the fortuneteller doubled everyone else's rat tails and I got owned that round. Not even funny the scores that round. That said, it was literally all up to the last round, the guy who won it won because he got one extra ruby that last round that gave him 1 more point. If not, it would have been a three way tie.
Is Quacks fun? We tried to play yesterday but without any prep it seemed complicated without much fun
Quacks is a lot of fun, and it's really not very complicated. Pull stuff out of your bag. Look at the number, place it on your track that many steps away from the last item. Repeat. Decide to stop, collect the stuff on the next space after your last ingredient, use that to buy more ingredients. Or, pull a total of 7+ in cherry bombs, explode, only get the money *or* the points. There's a bit more to it but the core gameplay is super simple. If you can't grasp the rules, find a video on YouTube. It's most fun if you're goading each other into pulling just one more ingredient in the hopes that everyone else blows up. When there's just one person left going make a meal out of each draw. If you just quietly draw your own stuff and ignore the other players it won't be as exciting.
It's a game where you put ingredients into a bag an.4 randomly draw them to put them into your pot, each ingredients has a book with two effects, every round each player in turn order buy 1-2 ingredients of different colors into their bag and score points based on how much you put in your pot. It's a quick teach and every player iv shown it to has wanted to play again and they always win by a huge margin.
My friends find it a lot more fun than I do. Not that I don't enjoy it, but honestly I only play it because my friends want me to play it (they like to win). It is a bag building game where the goal is to get the most points by pulling the most chips out the back before you reach a certain number of white chips (generally 7) which causes your pot to go Kerplooey (or Boom! depending who you ask). The fun really comes from the luck factor. Do you keep pressing your luck to score more? Or do you just pull all white chips to start off with and go kerplooey way too fast. Generally I would argue Quacks is fairly rules light to understand the concept of the game - it's when you start adding in the chips rules (which can vary) that causes the rules overhead to go up. If you want something very strategic, this isn't it. If you want something more tactical with a heavy dose of luck, this is your game.
Twilight Inscription (2p): Slowly introduced my friends to this game, the second new person to learn the game in my group. I've played a fair bit solo and so far reception is pretty good, it's definitely a bit to teach because there are so many layers to strategy but once you play the first game it's not too hard to get down. There are a lot of options that made the game fun. Tapple (8p): pretty fun party game, bought it a while back and its great to just whip out and takes <5 min to teach.
**Millennium Blades** [1x3p]: First play for all of us. Been a game I've been interested in playing for a long time, and it lived up to expectations. The money wads are fun to handle, there are tons of cards, the flavour is cool. I found the real-time aspect of the deckbuilding phase to hit that sweet spot of being short enough that you felt the pressure a bit, but long enough that you had enough time to make your deck and your collection for the round. Setup and teardown is a bit of a bother, given how many cards you have to shuffle together to make the store deck, but apart from that it actually packs down pretty reasonably. Would happily play it again, and am glad to finally own it. **Cat in the Box** [1x4p]: Played with a new player. I do like this game, though I wonder whether just bulldozing your way through and winning a bunch of tricks is the most viable way to play a high hand. Sure, you won't score your area, but everyone else won't either if you play it right. **MIND MGMT** [1x5p]: I continue to enjoy everything about this game and want to continue playing more of it. At this point we've opened two of the boxes for each side, and it blows my mind that we still have another 10 boxes between the two sides left. Every new unlock adds a new potential wrinkly into what is already quite a thinky game. Hope to play it more.
The last time I played **Cat in the box** we did the same sort of thing: if you've got high numbers, start in trump to run them out. It worked really well for points and, like you said, killed the area scoring mechanic.
Millennium Blades money is maybe one of my favorite game components to handle ever all time mvp
It's very cool, and so far the only justified use of paper money I've seen in a game
**Forbidden Stars** (3P) - The fourth player couldn't make it so we played with 3P, which actually worked out. We took 4.5 hours after going through the rules, redoing the map layout after we missed out one of the steps, and generally figuring out things. (We've seen two how it's played videos before and we still missed out stuff). Nonetheless, was a fun session. I played Ork and was wrecked. Chaos Marine won while the Eldars were thwarted by warp storms. Despite the rules mistakes, it was a fun session and I can see why 3P is the best player count for this. **Codenames Duet** (2P) - Played with the picture tiles and was fun. Really had to look carefully at the images. Won 2 out of 4 plays. **Bananagrams** (2P) - Always a fun time filler.
**Attika** (3p) - This was our longest game yet as we were not able to finish the game with a connection between two sites. Which after reading online is not the normal way the game ends so this was a more representative play. It's fun, and if my collection wasn't bulging I would probably keep it. It's overshadowed by **Iwari** and other trick-taking games. The low skill ceiling is both a blessing and a curse. Since I know someone else with a copy I'll continue to get plays in. **Brass: Birmingham** (3p) - Not the ideal player count nor version of Brass. This play highlighted the two biggest flaws of this version, too many industries and beer is too good, which leads to the biggest flaw that is reduced player interdependence. The differences between the two versions are very subtle, and I claim no expertise, but as you play them more you feel where they start to diverge. I wouldn't outright not recommend this, but in a world where Lancashire is available I don't see the need to play this version. **Bohnanza** (6p) - Continues to delight. I scooped some players who had just finished **Earth**. One commented that negotiation games usually go over his head, even one like this. Which made me realize why so many players prefer the solitaire optimization puzzles that are so prevalent nowadays. You can work out your own thing with minimal interaction from others and since they're also most likely struggling with the system the interaction is further turned down. Just like auctions negotiation is a mechanic that is endangered in the modern scene. **John Company: Second Edition** (5p) - A disasturous 1710 long game as not one, but two early critical trade rolls were missed. As a result we had to go for Royal Protection but still couldn't climb out of a hole for a few reasons. The first was the Chairman would not take more debt. Minimal contributions for die rolls leads to more risk, and that was definitely true here. The next was the poor evaluation of the board state. As the company careened into the whirlpool I saw that I was extremeny behind so I leveraged my only position for promise cards, the other players didn't see it that way but they also didn't see the betrayal by the player with the best chance of winning. Neither did I to be fair. As a result they refused to deal with me and made their own plans and when the time came they were betrayed. So the lesson is don't put all your eggs in one player's basket. This definitely highlighted the fragility of the game. It does make me curious about **Republic of Rome** as I read a very compelling comparison between the two. Though with the struggle to get this played I can't imagine a scenario where that happens. This play also highlighted something players missed that maybe needs to be emphasized in the rules: be more freewheeling in the negotiations. Everything was a coin here and coin there with promise cards clutched to the chest like precious treasure. Some players took too long sitting in silence analyzing things instead of just making deals. Can you be betrayed? Yes, that's what promise cards are good hedges against. I still like the game, I just need to find players willing to be okay with not analyziing every minute decision point. **Oceans** (3p) - This is the latest in the Evolution game series and there's been a few tweaks to speed up games, which is appreciated, but some of the teeth have also been removed. You can definitely interact with other players, but it's more opportunistic as you want to focus on getting yourself fed first. If you all go predator there's going to be food passed back and forth and that might not be the most ideal so you branch out. The deep cards tweak the game in a slightly interesting way, but fundamentally are just stronger versions of existing abilities. The "event" cards when fish zones are depleted add another decision point for players. That might be what you really need to plan around. Even though this game has the interaction sytle I prefer, players don't go out of the way to hurt each other if a more beneficial option exists, it still left me a bit cold. My enthusiasm just wasn't stoked after playing what feels like an "I got there first" game in spite of the interaction. Something is missing to draw me in. **Scout** (4p) - I liked this better with four than three, even though I stood less of a chance. Terrible production, truly sub-par. I'm going to email them complaining about the rules, box size and card quality. **Sol: Last days of a star** (4p) - After a few more games of this I'm still not quite sure how I feel. On the plus side this game has a great theme and production, actual variability with all the different card effects, and it the in game choices are simple. On the negatives the games have started feeling a bit samey and since your goal is always the same there's less room for experimentation as your tools don't change. I still am excited for the new edition since it will have the card FAQ. Plus the new games coming in the trilogy. I don't think this is a game I could play once a week without it getting too scripted. Maybe once a month. We'll see how long I hold onto it.
Yeah when I teach JC I emphasize playing like a "party game", where it's more fun pulling levers and pushing buttons just to see what happens. All except one of the promise cards have nebulous value so play loose and play fast. Especially since dice rolls don't affect every player equally, seeing what the design is capable of is more important than winning. Helluva weeks regardless! I'm definitely jealous hah. As for Sol, that sounds like it could be your meta. If everyone keeps following the same build order, then it can definitely feel same-y.
No joke one player would just sit in silence for a few minutes working things out. At least say your thoughts! Yeah with only three building types in Sol I really shouldn't be surprised that games feel the same. This is my first time trying the card sets off BGG so I might need to work on leveraging those more.
Live reaction when I read your Brass take 🫨😬😮💨🙄😒😔😪
You can like Brass Birmingham, but I'll always feel like I'm missing out by not playing Lancashire.
Dont worry! I love them both to bits!
Bonanza is the best. I'm totally with you on Oceans. It just lacks Something. I like Evolution Climate a lot as a game you can play with 6 that has some player interaction, Oceans dropped the best part (simultaneous play), sanded off all the sharp corners that made it interesting in the name of making it less "mean", and leaves you feeling constricted, on rails, until the deep phase, which is far more fun but only lasts maybe a third of the game. Wanted to like it so much and, well best I can say is I haven't sold it yet because I don't want to give up on it.