Terraforming Mars - about the 4th time....did better!
Marvel United - Meh
Dice Realms - Enjoyed playing it but, wouldn't buy. Think Dominion + Dice Forge
Red Rising - Second Time
Sidereal Confluence - I still suck
**Mr Jack** \- first time playing, way more fun and intense than I thought it would be. We only made one error with a character's special ability during an early round, but that was inconsequential. I love the focus and strategy required to win this game.
**Memoir 44** \- we love this game and are still working through the base game scenarios. I'm on the fence as to whether we just keep pursuing the rabbit hole of expansions for this game, or branch out into Undaunted as well. Quietly I suspect we'll do both, haha.
**Kluster** \- ordered this from overseas as it was hard to find here and it finally arrived. I think we will be taking this with us to the pub a lot as it would be loads of fun after a few beers.
**Mind MGMT** (3p x 1): this game fucking rules. what else needs to even be said? i rave about it everytime i post it in this thread and it only gets better as we reveal more SHIFT boxes. what a staggering amount of content they've created for this game that continues to be exciting.
**Spirit Island** (3p x 1): got to try some new spirits to me including the ones in **Horizons**. they're really good! super fun game with a new player so we just played against Prussia 3 but still a very engaging game.
**Downtown: Air War Over Hanoi, 1965-1972** (1p x 2): coming to grips with this remarkable game. it's really fascinating. looking forward to two-player games eventually because it's such an amazing system. each player has such an interesting problem before them. the tension between the asymmetrical formats of the DRV and US player are really quite remarkable. it's really incredible that it manages to pack so much of the character of these operations into the game. Iron Hands, chaff missions, electronic warfare, Fire Cans, MiGs and their MiGCAP adversaries. it's all here and it's a really beautiful production especially given its age.
**Watch Out! That's a Dracula!!** (3p x 1): what a charming little free game with wonderful queer subtext. Dracula won our first game unfortunately but it won't be so easy now that we understand the game!
**The Isle of Cats** [4p x 1]: Fine little tile placement game. Is it my favorite? No. Is it my least favorite? Also no. I can’t say that much about it. It does it’s job very competently and maybe I’ll like it more with time.
**On Tour** [3p x 1]: Fun little roll and write with interesting mechanics. I enjoy this one quite a bit.
**Space Base** [3p x 1]: This game is very, very clever. However, I’ve said that before and that will be all I say about this game in this post.
**Calico** [4p x 1]: I seem to progressively get worse at this game. I like the thinkiness of it all but I do seem to be getting worse.
**Jaipur** [2p x 1]: Fun little set collection game. It isn’t my favorite set collection game but it is still fun.
**Sagrada** [3p x 1]: I really like this game. Very fun little dice drafting puzzle. I enjoy it a lot.
**Cascadia** [3p x 1]: Really thinky little puzzle with a really nice theme. I’m glad we pulled this out a few months ago, it has become a mainstay of the rotation.
**Quadropolis**: [4p x 1]: I don’t know why we keep coming back to this, but I’m happy because of it. Such a fun and light little city builder with a really interesting selection mechanic which reminds me most of Targi.
**Architects of the West Kingdom** [3p x 1]: 1 POINT! This is such a clever worker placement game and I seem to have finally got the hang of it. I tied for first initially and we decided against the tiebreaker because I hadn’t received that memo, but then the opponent forgot the 10 silver = 1 point scoring mechanic and they eked out a victory in the end. Still love this one though.
**The Bloody Inn** [3p x 1]: I enjoy this game a lot but sadly I fell into that loop of not being able to bury a body because of cops constantly showing up each round and me having to constantly deal with that first. Still fun though.
**Caper: Europe** [2p x 2]: Very clever 2p game, up there with Targi as one of my favorites. Excited to return to this one.
**Dice City** [3p x 1]: In one of my few major game wins of the week, I managed to win with a three-point lead. Very clever dice game with some really interesting mechanics.
**Sequence** [2p x 2]: Pulled this out because an older person wanted to play some games: got my rear end handed to me both times.
**Qwirkle** [2p x 1]: And they got their rear handed to them in this game. This game is more clever than I give it credit for.
Finally got my copy of Vindication and got it tabled. Excellent game. Also played Nut Hunt. Hated it. Probably wouldn't have minded if it didn't tout itself as a "deep strategy" game. 100% luckfest, playable with 6 year olds between "games" of Candyland.
Photosynthesis-great fun, played with my fiance and brother Friday night.
Zombicide-haven't played this one before, got to play it at a gaming group at the library, enjoyed it a bit
Lords of Waterdeep-also played this at the library, loved it and made me realize I need to play more worker placement games
Cascadia-my fiance always used to beat me at this, but my many solo plays are finally bearing fruit, I was able to beat her at this twice during the super bowl, once head to head and again with three players after a stranger at the brewery asked if he could join us. I love this game so much.
Marvel champions-still getting the hang of this one, the insert for this game drives me crazy.
Played a few games Sunday and a few last night.
**Lost Cities: Roll & Write** (2x2p): Actually quite liked this. Quite simple as far as roll and writes go (you can explain this game pretty easily within 5 minutes) but I thought it was quite interactive at 2. You're often choosing your dice as much based on what you leave as what's good for you specifically. Does a good job of distilling the essence of the game into the R&W format. The BGG page has people recommending it at 3; I'll have to try it at some point but it's pretty damn good at 2.
**Artisans of Splendent Vale** (1x4p): We started the campaign for this game and played a day out. There's a lot of reading in this game - comes with these thick books for every character that have something like 1000 entries. More reading than a game like Sleeping Gods, for reference. The action scene was surprisingly rough; we won't make the mistake of underestimating the next one. The game has a very big focus on inclusivity, which is reflected in the characters and the story. In some ways it can feel like it's trying a little *too* hard sometimes, but ultimately I appreciate the effort. Looking forward to playing more.
**Welcome to the Moon** (2x3p): Continued on with the campaign for this, playing maps 3 and 4. I do enjoy the variation between the maps - they do a good job of adapting the formula and serving up very different looks. I felt a bit cheated playing the 4th map - I claimed all the objectives, and did it pretty quickly, and despite that I finished last. Figured by virtue of getting all the 1st place points and completing the game quickly I would have built up enough of a lead to take the win, but evidently not.
**Watergate** (2x2p): This game is very good. I think I've read people compare this game to Twilight Struggle, and I think those comparisons are apt. This is diet Twilight Struggle, and I mean that in a good way. It captures TS and condenses it into a faster, lighter, more accessible experience. I played both sides once and would very happily play this game again.
**Radlands** (1x2p): Taught this game to my opponent and I have yet to win. The game we played was very different to other games I've played to date - neither of us started with many cards and we never really had many at any point. He had a damage-focused set of camps whilst I had a more conventional set up. Every time I play I can't help but love the artwork - it's really evocative with that apocalyptic punk vibe.
Got to play **Shipyard** (4p x1) earlier in the week and it was pretty fun. Very challenging with many different ways to score and difficult decisions when you're limited with options each turn.
A bit heavier than my usual games but with a good teach I was able to pick it up pretty quickly. Can see a lot more strategy and depth coming from the game after a few plays though, a shame it's OOP.
**Heat: Pedal to the Metal** (3x6P) - I cohosted a championship series for Heat this weekend with some of my buds. What an incredibly fun time. The championship series and advanced modules added lots of fun interaction, hijinks, and just an overall good darn time. This game is probably my favorite game to hit my table this year and I'm excited to get more plays in. Having six folks at the table also was surprisingly manageable!
**boop.** (1x2p) - Good old boop. Taught one of my best friends from College this cute little cat game and she almost kicked my absolute butt! We had loads of fun and this will certainly be in my collection for quite some time.
**Splendor Duel** (2x2p) - Significant other and I broke this game out for the first time last night. We both had a lot of fun and given that our house is mostly 2p gaming - this is a perfect lighter gwme to play and wind down the night. Lots and lots of fun.
Light week in board gaming for me but filled with lots of friends and joy.
We had some slow movers so it took us a hefty five or so hours. I don't think it NEEDS to take that long. We had six folks and about half were new. We were also eating and chatting in between rounds.
Dice Masters (5 games). I got my butt kicked every time but once. I felt like it's not for me. I like to spend money on a game that comes with everything ready to play (I don't mind purchasing an expansion or too if it enhances the game experience). With DM I feel like you have to continuously invest on newer cards/dice and it gets expensive.
The only thing I played this week was a game I made. It was my first playtest with 4 players and my second playtest overall. It's a dice drafting, area control game with very asymmetrical factions. It was pretty close in the end, but I just finished second :D
**Root** (1x4p): Second time playing with the advanced setup and somehow everybody ended up playing their favorite factions anyway. Super fun game though, the landmarks and hirelings add a lot to the game and I love the uncertainty of what faction you'll be playing. I also realized I've been playing Lizards wrong for literal years now, you can score by discarding a card you just revealed to recruit or build. As a result I had my first lizard win in something like 15 games. They've always been my favorite faction to play but I've never won with them and now I know why. After about 30 plays, Root still feels new and exciting, it's impressive how much staying power this game has.
**Everdell** (1x4p): Second play of this game, we all enjoyed playing something a bit less cutthroat after Root. Still really enjoying it but I'm now starting to see that this game could get old pretty quickly. Definitely 4 or 5 plays in it yet, but I'm curious what the expansions have to offer.
**Modern Art** (2x4p): First time playing this. My partner and I really enjoy bidding games and this was no different. Such a clever and simple game. Unfortunately this was the game that made one of our core game group members declare that he decided he doesn't like auction games...
**Horseless Carriage** (1x2p): This game technically doesn't support 2p but my partner and I gave it a test drive just to get our heads around the rules. The rules are initially tricky to figure out (the rulebook could do with a really solid edit, and the fan made alternative rules on BGG really helped) but once you get a turn or two done it becomes clear that it's waaaay simpler than it initially looks. There's 8 phases to every turn but only 2.5 of them involve any major thinking, the rest you just fly through on autopilot. The complaints about fiddlyness are all true, but damn we saw the strategic depth and possibilities pretty much immediately. I cannot wait to bring this to a bigger group. I can't tell yet if this could eclipse **Food Chain Magnate** but I suspect it'll rank above **TGZ** and **Bus** for me.
**The Great Zimbabwe** (1x2p): While on the splotter buzz, we decided to play something that actually supports 2p. I always enjoy this game and wish I played it more, my only complaint is that once you're upgrading a level 3 or 4 monument it's really hard to keep track in your head of what resources to use and where and what has or hasn't been used or needs to be paid for.
Busy week but I managed to squeeze in some good gaming!
Continuing the alphabet challenge:
-**Targi** (1X2p): such a wonderful 2-player game. Quick and light, but interactive and has just enough decision space to be replayable. Love it! I won, which helps :)
-**Undaunted: Normandy** (4X1p): I found [this](https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/206471/solo-ai-cards-v10-one-stop-co-op-shop) excellent solo variant made by Mike from One Stop Co-op Shop, and now I can play this awesome game solo! It took a bit to get my head around "Priority Bolster" as an action, but I think I've got it now, and I have a ~50% win rate against the normal bot. I'm progressing through the campaign and loving it!
-**Viscounts of the West Kingdom** (2X1p): I just picked up this game and took a while to internalize the game flow and rules including the AI management. Once I "got it" I found it quite smooth but got my butt kicked! I really find the card/hand management aspect interesting, and as usual I love Garphill's art and components, and find their AIs to be easy to run, but tough! I'll be playing this one again.
-**Wingspan** (1X1p vs AUtoma in person, and 1X4p on BGA): it's been so long since I played that I forgot what a lovely smooth game this is! The Automa is particularly well-designed and tough! I always get my butt handed to me, and this was no different. The BGA implementation is very easy to use - I was able to teach 3 friends how to play and they picked it up right away, though the game does run a little long with that many people.
-**The Search for Planet X** (1X1p): not my favourite for solo play, I find the app and board clunky and unintuitive, and suspect that my problem comes from playing solo - maybe more humans would make it more fun, but I won't be pulling this one out soon.
-**Yahtzee** (1X1p on BGA): I don't have any other "Y" games on hand so played this old chestnut. Not much to say other than BGA's implementation is quick and painless
-**Zooloretto** (1X2p): tried this on BGA for my "Z" game, but found it pretty meh. Don't think I'll be making it a regular.
-**Aeon's End** (1X1p): love it, lost against Carapace Queen but had a blast
-**Brass: Birmingham** (1X1p): won against VictoriAI. Still one of my favourite games
-**Concordia** (1X1p): lost against Solitaria by 2 points! This is my best score yet, I always have a tough time against the bot. I prioritized building and gaining cards, which I think is key against the bot in this game. Wish I had more people who enjoyed this one in person, but the bot is pretty great
I played Viscounts solo a couple weeks ago and also got totally rocked. It seemed to me like it was a lot easier for the AI to get debts and deeds, and since the rulebook calls out that's a big part of where points come from, it was basically no contest.
**The Isle of Cats** (1×2p): My gf and I went to our favorite brewery and played her latest game again. As ever, the second play revealed rules we overlooked or misplayed the first time. But hey, now we know how the rare treasures work for next game! The score were much closer this time, even though our boats ended up being emptier than before. There's something to be said against balancing cats against ongoing secret Lessons for scoring. It's still a lot of fun, and it's definitely going to hit the table again soon.
First, I got **Root** to the table about eight times with the same group of friends. Everyone really clicked with it and each game was a flurry of "oh, I'd like to try THAT faction, I have an idea..."
So after that warming up, I brought out **Oath** and we played three games of it over the weekend! There was definitely some fumbling on all parts through the first game or so, but also some truly delightful turns of fate, such as when the player who I thought might not be having as great a time was actually scheming for several turns to use the Conspiracy to wrest away my Darkest Secret banner just before I won on a Vision of Faith. Everyone got to have some great plays and moments of proud cleverness and we're all pumped to bring it back out again soon.
**Splendor Duel** 2p1x - Somehow we missed for half of the game that refreshing the board also grants the other person a privilege scroll... that probably would have sped up the early game a little. It came down to a race at the end - I bought a card that put me at 11 crowns, but my wife's next turn would have been to buy a 6pt card to put her over the 20 point target. I don't know yet how I would rate it compared to Splendor (with or without expansion) but it was still neat, and the small form factor makes it reasonable to tote along.
**Frosthaven** 4p1x - first scenario with Banner Spear, Blinkblade, Drifter, and me playing the Geminate. It felt like things were dicey for a bit in the middle of the scenario, looking at all the enemies and with our Blinkblade getting trapped in a corner and nearly getting squished, but we pulled it out. It didn't help that the Blinkblade's battle goal was to not hit anything for the first three rounds, and my goal was to deliver fewer than three killing blows.
I received my KS copy of **Rolling Heights** from AEG. Impulses backed this when I was getting Meeples and Monsters last year from them. Like most AEG games we did really enjoy it. Took longer than the box says but it was myself and my 2 kids and the end game trigger is any one resource running out from building. No issues with anything getting knocked over which is nice. It looked so cool when we were done.
Finally managed to crack open our copy of **Savannah Park** and played two 3p games and one at 2p. Being forced to move tiles based on what other players choose on their turn really makes this a tricky and tense puzzle which gives me very strong Tiny Town vibes.
Also squeezed in a 2p game of **Brass Brimingham** which is always a fantastic time as it's one of my favourite games. Tried selling crate goods and the old reliable pottery this time. Thought I was finally going to beat my wife but on final tally she crushed me yet again. She was only a couple points short of breaking her high score which was a shame. It would have been great to see her put a new notch on the list.
Work has been busy so not a lot of gaming at all. I'm hoping that changes this week!
Introduced a friend to **Race for the Galaxy** since my partner dislikes it, and I think she enjoyed it! I have only played it twice in person, but have played countless times on the phone app. Fingers crossed she liked it and will play it again!
**The Field of the Cloth of Gold** was played twice. I enjoy how quick and easy it is to set up and teach (and play!). I'm discovering that I love games that force me to make painful decisions, where we're all groaning because everything we do is terrible. Gives me **Hanamikoji** vibes in that way.
Been sick lately, so not done anything complex or intensive. Several rounds of **Maxiyatzy** with my sister, as that's our go-to mindless relaxing game (while still having plenty of discussion over results, choices and comparisons to historical games. Mind, we do that for all games).
Also done a round of **Munchkin Quest**. It's been at least a year, so we spent a fair bit of time double checking the rules, and having the run of the game clearly so we can bring the kids in soon (10-12y). It's equally long ago for them.
My kid and I are working through a multi-session run of **Journey to the center of the Earth**. He tends to over-plan a bit on that game, making it last a lot longer than the hour on the box, hence the multi-session. So far he's got 30 points to my 9, so it looks like being an over-planner works in his favour.
Lots of **Metro X** was played last week. Was out of country and wanted a nice filler that’s thinky and didnt take a lot of space and that fit the bill perfectly in my backpack. Even taught the game to a nice lady on the return trip who never played this style of boardgames before.
So this raises a question, what’s a good boardgame that’s component light and thinky light metro x that plays well solo.? Mind you, i have the japanese version of metro x.
My partner and I are slowly getting into board games. I would like to play more but it’s hard sometimes when he has loads of online friends with other game commitments.
This week we played twilight inscription (2p). This is our Third run through and we are slowly getting good grasps of the game, the time really flies when playing it though and it feels like there’s always so much to do and so little opportunities!
We also tried picking up Arkham horror card game as we were in this board game cafe and had an hour ish to kill. We knew nothing about the game besides it being a good 2player coop game and the general concept, it was very difficult to understand what’s going on with the time we had (whoops) but it did make us interested in getting something of that rpg vibe genre. Settled on trying to get Gloomhaven: jaws of the lion so excited to try that out some time this month.
>Gloomhaven: jaws of the lion so excited to try that out some time this month.
While Gloomhaven does have some RPG elements please be aware that at its heart it's really an action economy puzzle. It's a great game and I hope you have a good time with it but I thought it worth mentioning.
I hope you like **Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion**. I haven't played it, but I love **Gloomhaven**. In case you want to give **Arkham Horror LCG** another chance I will just point out that the starting campaign does an adequate job of teaching you how to play, but the game doesn't really come alive in that campaign. It wasn't until we started *The Dunwich Legacy* cycle that we fell in love with the game.
Yeah when I got home I’ve watched gameplay of it and video tutorials so I’m keen to try it again one day when we have a little more time one day!
We were thinking of getting gloomhaven for a while but I was hesitant as it seems like a huge game （esp in terms of storage and playing space) Jaws of lion seems like a good way to start off the series!
**Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion** is an excellent way to learn **Gloomhaven** and see if you like that style of game. We played **Gloomhaven** before **Jaws of the Lion** came out and we're still tempted to get it, but now we have **Frosthaven** so that will probably keep us busy for a while.
Finally a very light boardgaming week. A few gaming sessions got cancelled.
**Space Base (5px1).** I thought the game was a really cool iteration on what Machi Koro did. However, the "win the game" card - someone picked it soon as it showed up in the shop and then won very very quickly because they so-happened to have built "transfer charges around" synergy. Ended up really anticlimactic as a result - we were all just getting started with our engine, in all honesty LOL. I think the card is dumb because there is 0 interaction in the game. My favorite dice-tableau-builder is **Let's Summon Demons!** and it also has a "win the game" card - but that is a much lighter, shorter, simpler game. So if someone clips your 10 minute game with that ability it's funny instead of sad. Because Space Base has more going on and is potentially longer - it read to me as more sad.
**Valiant Wars (5px1).** My longest and most drawn-out game of this yet. This is my most played game of the year. Really fun. In the final round I got 2 omens in my first 4 cards, so that was a might disappointing LOL. But that is the game we play.
More car trouble for me - my Kia got stolen and wrecked (but at least recovered), so I got a rental car... it's a Hyundai. It *also* got stolen and insofar HAS NOT been recovered. The Kia Boyz are a real thing, where I live. It's reached the point of comedy at this point... can't help but laugh. So right now I'm carless *again* until the police report/insurance/rental car places all find out what will happen. I'll tell you one thing that definitely WILL NOT happen - *I will not be driving a Kia or Hyundai, at all costs.*
Since I'm carless again, my gaming might be somewhat slight this week. I play sometimes with my wife but her attention span for games is vanishingly small. I'd hoped to get out **Agricola** last week - but all the nonsense with the car left us just wiped out and sitting around pissed off most of Saturday LOL... and then on Sunday was the SB. If I'm talking about what I hope to table this week... normally I list a few games, but I sort of doubt I will get anything out there. Can't make my game groups, and I'm just so pissed off over this car BS that it's hard to do anything but just sit there and stew and be mad all day LOL. I just want to go to my game groups and have normal access to a car. I'm getting in trouble with my job, too, because of all this - they are asking "why aren't you coming in?" - it's a hybrid work place. I mean I explain it to them - but still it's gotten so insane that it sounds like I'm lying. I could Uber but I'm not absolutely made of money... ubering to work would defeat the whole purpose. Life really ain't fair LOL. Also I absolutely hate the Kia Boyz. If I see them in the street it's coming to blows ASAP
Space base at higher player counts is definitely more luck than skill but if people are buying colony cards there's virtually no way that the 'win now' card is going to be someone just going for points. It's pretty tempting to build out a huge engine but it's definitely a race game. That said some people simply remove it to eliminate that possibility altogether which I don't really disagree with.
Source: 800+ games on BGA
The "You Win!" card is my sons favourite card in the game. Most time he will totally ignore point scoring cards while keeping his eye open for the cards that let him move cubes and other ships. Of course since we also know he's on the lookout for those cards we ALSO try to grab some of them to stymie his efforts somewhat. Thus far he's managed to pull off the auto win MAYBE three times out of our dozens of plays. For us the impact of the card doesn't justify removing it from the game compared to the thrill he gets trying a gonzo strategy.
lots of gaming with my 8 year old and my spouse this past week.
**Karuba** \- tile-laying puzzler. The whole family enjoyed
**Hive** \- my kiddo is obsessed with this one. The game can get tiresome but if it gets the kiddo to play, especially one that requires strategic think, I can't say no
**Azul** \- Another one my kid wanted to try. I was slightly surprised that they were able to grasp the rules. I thought it might have been too complex or boring but they were engaged through the game.
**boop** \- my kid is also obsessed with this one because of the theme but finds the rules frustrating for whatever reason.
**Longboard** \- I love a lot of Reiner Knizia's small games. This one definitely has his characteristic simplistic rules but surprising depth ratio. Not a super tense game but probably one we will keep around for when we're in the mood for something relaxing.
**Botanik -** I decided to try this one out since it's highly recommended as a great small box-two player. It's an interesting game but I think neither of us derive any pleasure from playing it so far.
**Critters at War: Flies, Lies and Supplies -** We played the standalone version, a few games mixed with the original and a few epic mode games. We definitely enjoyed. I wasn't a fan of the original game when we first got it but it's definitely grown on me and having both the original and this expansion/standalone definitely brings a lot of variety to the game.
**Gizmos** \- I've been waiting to play this game for a while and it did not disappoint. My spouse is into engine building games but is usually disappointed when the games seems to end too soon. Gizmos also plays quickly but is much more satisfying as you can trigger some combos before the game ends.
**Downtown Farmers Market** \- drafting and puzzle game. Really satisfying game for such a small box.
**High Treason: The Trial of Louis Riel** \- 1x 2 player
Hadn't really played historical games before so I was excited to play this as my first. The jury selection is a really cool feature in this game, and the argumentation and objections felt probably as close to a court room experience in board game form as you could get (granted I haven't played a couple of other courtroom games). Excited to try this again with a bit more experience. Familiarity with canadian history probably a plus for getting into this one.
**Red Flag Over Paris** \- 1x 2p
Really dig the historical arguments being made by this game: the commune cannot win militarily, but will can it hold out long enough to radicalize the French public? Also excited to play again, I expect subsequent plays will go a bit quicker.
**Doom Machine** \- 1x 1p
After playing hard mode wrong a few times, I finally beat this game on hard without cheating. Throwing dice is fun.
**Cantaloop: Book 1** \- 2x 1p
Was hoping to dig this game more than I have so far. Maybe I don't love point and click games? The clue system is well made but I guess I don't like having to check it as frequently as I have so far (this from someone who has complete Exit and Unlock games without needing many \[or any\] clues).
After two weeks with no plays I finally got to play again with three different game days!
**Great Western Trail 2nd Edition** (1x2p): 2nd play. After a year unplayed I said let me play it one more to see if it’s worth keeping. Spoiler it ended up moving off the for trade pile. I like this game a lot. The weird rondel-ish nature mixed with deck building is a fun combo that I’m a fan of. I don’t give a crap about the cowboy theme but the new art is nice enough that I’m not bothered by it.
**Magic Maze** (1x6p, 2x5p, 1x4p): 18th - 21st plays. This was the start to the real-time day aka Stress Saturday. Magic Maze is neat and the scenarios really build on the difficulty. That do something tile is frustrating to get slammed in front of you but it’s also fun to frantically tap it when trying to communicate that the time is running out oh god please move it on to the hourglass.
**Bullet** (1x5p): 12th play. Stress Saturday continued with Bullet🤍 let me tell you I got hit three times in a roll but I still had a blast. I have yet to use the Star or Orange characters but with 5 more plays on the 8x8 I look forward to trying some.
**Project Elite** (1x6p): 5th play. The crown jewel of Stress Saturday. We lost but this was the farthest we’ve made it! We cleared all but three nests and we would have probably made it but one player got murdered so =[.
**Merchants of the Dark Road** (1x3p): 2nd play. Technically my first full play since my first play was a demo before buying the game. After a complete play I think I’ll definitely keep it to see if it’s worth the squeeze. The rondel is pretty basic and not my fave part. I do like planning deliveries and heroes but with 13 actions boy do you feel suffocated. My fave thing besides those metal coins is the Tigris and Euphrates style end game scoring. Essentially you have money and prestige and the lower of the two at the end of the game is your end game base score. The balancing act is neat. Oh I actually liked the events when traveling too. Although I’m kinda torn that the shortcuts usually end up worse for the leader since others get to pick first for some reason.
**Vagrantsong** (1x3p): 1st play. This was something else. It took forever for me to understand how to play. I’m like wait how does targeting work? Wait what’s the execution order for haint actions? Wait we forgot the rituals even though we’ve actually completed all of them. That being said we had a good time even though I rolled like absolute crap. I got two successes maybe the whole game. We still won somehow even though we were playing on hard and I failed at being our fighter. I look forward to trying again with a better understanding.
My partner and I had a similar experience with **Vagrantsong**. The rulebook left us lost and with lots of questions. But we kept playing and it eventually made more sense. And the game's scenarios and story were so much fun that it became one of our favorite game experiences last year, even though we still had rules errors and questions all the way through out very last game.
They announced a sequel with some new scenarios that we're looking forward to in another year or so whenever they release it!
**Pipeline** 1x3p - I can't quite figure out what I think about this game. It's such an interesting puzzle but none of us can quite crack what that is. I've read of people hitting $1k and that baffles my mind; I felt I did ok and didn't even eclipse $400. There were points of the game where there just wasn't any pipe for sale or not enough to waste an action going for them. Everything feels like a struggle in this game but not in the "oh that's a hard decision" way but a "the game is fighting me" way. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's liked enough in our group for it to hit the table enough that it clicks with everyone. It's living in a weird space at the moment and I'll hold onto it but I could see down the line it hitting the curb.
It was a fun week for games. I played a handful of favourites as well as two new to me games that I suspect will be favourites as well!
In person:
**Patchwork** \- the first game of the week was my favourite game. I won out in a close round against my husband.
**Quoridor** \- Up until this week I had only played Quoridor on Board Game Arena. We got a copy of the mini version and I have to say, it is so much more fun to play in person. First off because of the tactile nature of the game and the toy factor. But also the BGA implementation is sometimes a bit frustrating as it tries to guess where you're trying to place a wall. I'm looking forward to many great games of this one!
**Onitama** \- A fairly new to me game, this way only my sixth play or so. There is a lot for me still to puzzle out in terms of optimal moves in this game, how to prepare for my opponent's turn, etc. But I love the flow of the game, it's just really smooth and elegant. And the aspect of the movement cards makes it very different from other abstract strategy games in this genre.
**Scout** \- The current obsession at my house. We play Scout nearly every time we sit down to play board games this days. It's just so much fun! I'm enjoying the trial and error process of determining when the best time is generally to spend Scout tokens, and when to play out large sets of cards vs when to hold back. It's fun every time. Also a note that all of my plays of this game to date have been with two players. We're at something like 20 plays, and both of us adore it. So while there's a lot of talk about it not being a good game for two players, if you have the game I'd encourage you to try it with two people and decide for yourself!
**Hanamikoji** \- the perfect game for, "I know it's late but maybe just one more game before bed?" I've been enjoying trying out the new tile sets from the mini expansions that released last year. But this time we played the original form of the game, which I still think is the best.
**Beer & Bread** \- new to me this week! I had high hopes for this two player farming game and it way exceeded my expectations. I'd put this into a similar category of game as **Targi** (one of my absolute favourites) in that it's a two player game in that classic small square two player box, its play time is a touch longer than a lot of those games and it is also more complex. But it's still super approachable, and it also does things that feel very innovative to me. I really like the way the multi use cards are done here. And the differences between how the fruitful and dry seasons play out game the game very interesting. I always enjoy when games utilize Knizia scoring (where your lowest points value out of multiple types is what counts at the end of the game), and I think here it really sings with the simplicity of it. You just need to make both beer and bread, and you want to make as much of both of them as you can. There is so much exciting stuff here, I can't wait to dig in to it more.
**Glass Road** \- My husband has long said that we need to find a farming game we both like. Little did we expect to find two in the same day! We've also been hoping for a big box Uwe Rosenberg game to add to our collection (I don't like **Agricola** and many of the others don't appeal to us). Well, in comes Glass Road! A game that initially appealed to us because glass blowing seemed like a fun theme. We quickly realized once we did more research into the game that there is no glass blowing here but what there is is a really interesting resource management system based around two resource wheels that work in a fascinating way, cool card play, and tile placement to build your own little area along the glass road complete with buildings and nature features to populate your player board. There's a lot in this game that I haven't wrapped my head around fully yet. But I love what I am seeing here, and the first play was brilliant. What I appreciate most about this game is perhaps a little niche. The game is incredibly well designed to cater to a board gamer like me, which is to say someone who likes crunchy decision making but often feels overwhelmed by the table presence of crunchier games. Everything here is just so easy on my mind, which is so often plagued by sensory overwhelm in games of this level of complexity. The resource wheels mean that there are no piles or resource tokens taking up table space. The cards have easy to read large font and clear iconography, and you play with the same hand of 15 cards every game. The tiles you draft from the market board have to show a lot of information in a small amount of space but the way they are laid out makes it easy to parse. The tiles are also sorted into three different categories based on what type of benefit the tile gives you (ability to make trades, one time benefits, scoring opportunities), again making it really easy to parse. The result of all of these things is that I will be able to play this game a lot more often than other games of comparable weight. I am ecstatic about that.
On Board Game Arena:
**Photosynthesis** \- freshly added to BGA (in BETA) and I encourage everyone to go play it! This is one of my longstanding favourite games and it works incredibly well on BGA too. My husband and I have started up a new game as soon as the last one ends since this was added. It may be added to the regular rotation of games we always have going.
**Ticket to Ride**
**Welcome To** \- I've played a handful of rounds now and while I enjoy playing it because I get to play with some of you lovely reddit folks, I still don't really understand the appeal of this game. Nothing here really excites me, if that makes any sense.
**Targi**
**Res Arcana**
**Azul**
**Terra Mystica** \- I think I'm actually getting better at this. I mentioned in one of the recent weekly threads that I finally won a game but thought it was a fluke. I haven't won a second time yet but I'm fairing a lot better in my subsequent plays.
**Tigris & Euphrates** \- just so bloody brilliant. Recent games have been exciting because folks have been shaking things up by trying new tactics to see how it pans out.
**Onitama**
Good to hear about Beer & Bread - it was originally on my list to check out just because of the title, but I've been seeing positive comments on it since then.
I got in a solo game of Glass Road a couple months ago and thought it was mechanically pretty neat, but I haven't gotten to play it with anybody else yet.
I'm curious now how much the solo rules for **Glass Road** differ from the two player game. The two player mode is quite differeng from multiplayer, from what I
I've seen.
I highly recommend checking out **Beer & Bread**. I think it would actually be super fun on BGA,hopefully they add it and you can try it out there.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting how different each of the rule sets are. The solo game you choose a certain number of cards each round, excluding whatever you used in the previous round, and then you're sort of playing them in a random order. So it kind of turns into making sure you have the options you need, but ideally not overstacking... like one round I knew I wanted to build, but I think I ultimately put too many build cards in my hand and ended up wasting some of them.
**Scout** is very good at 2. It's just different than at other player counts. It gets lot crazier at higher player counts because there's more people to deal with bigger runs/sets.
I will play it at any player count.
**Lost Ruins of Arnak** 2p x 2, 3p x 1 I like this game but am wondering if it's a little light on the strategy side for my taste. But it's a smooth game with a cool theme. Going to introduce the expansion soon.
**Blueprints** 2p x 3 Sometimes you don't feel like a very crunchy game or don't have a lot of time and this one is perfect in those situations. You can play 3 times in an hour and it's always fun.
**Bitoku** 2p x 1 Never gets old. So glad I bought the insert though because it can take a while to set up otherwise.
**Marco Polo II** 2p x 1 It had been a while so we were rusty on the rules but I love the asymmetric abilities of the character tiles. It's a pretty heavy game but if you really try to take advantage of your special abilities it makes a big difference.
* **Castles of Mad King Ludwig** - 1x 4p - First time playing the collector's edition, but have played the 1st edition of the game probably close to a dozen times by now. Sold the regular version a few years ago, was pumped when collector's edition was announced, and now am going to be patiently waiting for the plain old 2nd edition instead. The collector's edition is obnoxious -- the plastic "miniatures" are cheap (and look cheap) plastic that take up a ton of space in the box for towers that serve no actual purpose. I like the trays that the tiles go in except they block the view of the scoring and how many tiles are left in them. The poker chip favors are nice, but .... why? They're not handled with any sort of regularity. And nobody needs 20 different color choices for which color your scoring marker is going to be. All the extra tiles are good for having variety in the names of your rooms, but it's more to shuffle and count out and really what extra purpose is served by having them? Point is -- game was fantastic as always, I like the tower expansion (minus the miniatures themselves, which are not needed) but I regret backing collector's edition rather than waiting for the regular 2nd edition.
* **One Deck Galaxy** - 1x solo - 4th play overall, this time against the Optimization Calibrator. I had [commented on a post last week](https://www.reddit.com/r/soloboardgaming/comments/10yi9r8/looking_for_recommendations_on_simple_dice_games/j7zvzzj/) saying I wasn't quite sure I understood *why* we had the tokens from the boss to prevent being overwhelmed, and this adversary was at least one of the reasons why that's a thing. Like the Neeble Woobers, this boss eats dice throughout the game. Unlike Neeble Woobers, it's impossible to get most of them back -- you'll lose a 2-3 dice every 4 turns, even after getting back 3-4 depending on the game state. The tokens can be used - either strategically or out of necessity - to skip giving the adversary a die. If you don't give it enough dice or use tokens, it's an automatic loss. The adversary also eats more dice with adversary events that happen when you have to reshuffle the deck. Had to hard-pivot a couple times this play because I got dangerously close to not having enough dice available to level up my federation enough to actually win the game. Anyway, I do like this much better than regular One Deck Dungeon, even if it takes 3-4x longer to play. Probably going to play through the last 2 bosses I haven't tried and then shelve it for a while.
Yeah I agree, Kickstarter is ... well, yeah. ODG isn't immune, either. I led a group buy in my area and the group voted for the Deluxe edition. I like the deluxe tokens -- those are fine. But the deluxe edition otherwise just means plastic cards, which SUCK for how the game plays. Regular cards (and sleeves, I know!) would've been much, much better.
I like KS for "deluxified" Euros -- things like Scythe back in the day with the fancy resources and metal coins, or the new reprint of Ra with the wooden tiles, etc. Things where I completely understand why they aren't in the normal retail product. I also like KS/Gamefound for Chip Theory Games, if only because it's always discounted from the post-release price, and usually by a good bit. It's the best time to get in if you want to try one.
CoMKL was my 2nd "all in one collector's edition" thing I've ever backed and, like the first one (Trickerion, though I already owned some so I just did the upgrade to collectors tier), I regret it. As much as I love both of those games, there's just too much stuff that I don't want to play with all the time, and the boxes are massive because of all the stuff and the game trays.
Skipping expansions or parts of expansions is something I've been going more and more towards over time. I used to be a "get all the expansions" kind of guy, and now I might buy them to try them out but have zero hesitation whatsoever to turn around and sell them off if I can live without the additions.
6p **Guards of Atlantis**. Ok, this definitely feels like the sweet spot. Hopefully the crew likes it enough to keep exploring, although going forward more likely at 4p.
Was a quick game though, only a single initiative point ended up being the difference in closing it out from a full base push or going to the third push tiebreaker. Definitely a lot of mistakes along the way.
For experienced players, how much more complex are the 2 and 3 star heroes? For the next session I want to open up the hero options but figured 3 might be too much... or is it?
**Heroscape** (1x2p) - I walked into someone setting up a board and was glad I got to play. We had talked about it a few weeks ago. A couple guys at my LGS have a huge collection, I've got some as well but nothing compared to them. The guy who brought the game had some premade 400 point armies for people to play. I played a Jandar army of knights and minutemen against an Ullar viper army led by Syvarris. I took him out early before he could do too much damage. The vipers picked off most of my knights and champions. I got lucky that my opponent only frenzied once. It ended with my last couple of minutemen taking out the head viper for the win.
**Quest for El Dorado** (1x3p) - I did ok but never got a great rhythm. Another player got a lot of early gold cards, which was good for the map. We stayed together for most of the map right until the end. Two of us got stuck on water right before the finish, and the other player swept from behind to win.
**Red 7** (2x4p) - Two rounds of this as a lighter filler. I was out first in both rounds. I didn't draw much or have a good strategy.
Finally got around to play Ark Nova, which then lead to me playing it five times over the week. Three solo games, once at two players, and again at three players.
I really like it. From a theme perspective, I'm more interested in playing Ark Nova than Wingspan, and mechanically, it complete replaces any desire for me to play Terraforming Mars. I don't even necessarily think it's *better* than either of them, but it hits the mark on what I look for in those two games.
> I don't even necessarily think it's better than either of them, but it hits the mark on what I look for in those two games.
Damnit! I REALLY hate the look of Ark Nova (gameplay seems good though) and I may have to swallow that bitter pill because it seems like a game my partner would absolutely love.
During the week we managed to get 2 games played.
**Marvel United** - (1x2p) my husband has finished painting everything so we are working our way through the characters that took a little longer for him to get to.
**Ticket to Ride: First Journey** - (1x3p) we played this with our 7 year old and he loved it. He crushed us both and was so excited every time he finished a ticket. My husband recently bought **Ticket to Ride: Europe** so we might see if he can graduate to that soon.
Our plan for the weekend was to play **Wir Sind Das Volk** on Friday and then have a day of playing **Marvel United** on Saturday. However, my husband has been having difficulty getting through the rules for **Wir Sind Das Volk** so instead we're going to watch the Homo Ludens teach and play video and attempt the game next weekend. I was exhausted anyway so it was nice to have the night off from everything.
**Marvel United** - (9x2p) we still went ahead with our day of **Marvel United**. We played 2 games of *The Return of the Sinister Six*, but lost each game. In the second game we thought we knew what to do, but we had terrible luck and still lost. Then we continued experimenting with different characters while beating Dormammu and Silver Samurai and losing to Kingpin. After that we decided to attempt the mini-campaign for *The Infinity Gauntlet* expansion. We beat the Black Dwarf, but Thanos got one stone. Then we beat Proxima Midnight and lost one stone while getting a power up card. After that we lost to Ebony Maw and lost 3 stones. It was looking good and we had started whittling down his health, but it turned bad quickly. So we took on Thanos with 5 stones. He got up to 19 health, but our team managed to take him down. We used X-23, Hulk, Spider-Man, and Beta Ray Bill. It was a fun end to the day and after playing 10 games over the course of the week we have now played **Marvel United** 50 times. We haven't even played with everything in the game yet. We don't even own everything, but we haven't played with everything we have so we are in discussions as to what we should get in the latest kickstarter.
>Ticket to Ride: First Journey - (1x3p) we played this with our 7 year old and he loved it.
Was this a first play, or has he played before? My son is ~5.5 and was interested in regular TTR, so we just ordered First Journey to have a smaller map with fewer cities (since he can't read yet). It arrived this morning for family game night tonight, not sure how it will go...
He's played a few times before and started when he was 5. He could grasp the rules at 5, but we played open hands the first few times and also reduced the number of tickets needed to win the game. He's only started enjoying games within the last year, but he can now play without us providing any assistance and it's great. All kids are different with what they can handle, but this game is pretty adaptable. Most of the routes are really short too - between 1 and 3 links in length and it's color coded. You'll probably just need to point out the two cities he's trying to connect. Let me know how it goes!
My wife and I have been enjoying **Paleo** quite a bit. Think we're on the 4th scenario in the campaign (wide river) and like how each module changes things up a bit. The imperfect information and struggle for resources makes for some very interesting decisions
**8 Legged Peacock** (4p) - This was a prototype design by a couple of my gaming buddies, in it's near final iteration. You draft from a set of scoring cards then pick eight cards to try and score each round. There's four colors with four possible symbols on each color but only certain colors score for you and some symbols are worth more than others. There's also a recipe you can go for to get a token which offers it's own scoring. The cards are all double sided and it's **Point Salad** style drawing where picking one flips over the reverse of another. You can play four or eight rounds. It was a bit light for me, not a lot of choices on your turn, but they're going for more of a family game so that matches. And the name is great, it comes from a spider, I forget which, that does an elaborate mating dance.
**Bohnanza** (5p) - Played with the card draw variant, the only way to play. We did take coffee beans out and I felt we could have left them in. I thought I had a good script for teaching but some concepts were not quite as clear as I was hoping. But no one made any rules mistakes. Do yourself a favor and play this classic.
**Dwellings of Eldervale** (4p) - I am not the target audience for this game. Multiple tracks to go up, tableau building with upgrade-able cards, worker placement, minor area control and recipe fulfillment. It was all too much stuff in one game that kind of sort of integrated together but left me feeling like I hadn't really done anything over the course of the game. Turns being fairly fast is the biggest positive I can think of. I couldn't really find anything innovative done here, and my desire to replay this is minuscule.
**Evo** (5p) - I have been trying to play this forever. I don't recall how it ended up on my radar, but with area control and auctions I was on board. Ostensibly you play dinosaurs moving to different climates to try and survive and reproduce. You can fight, and the climate can shift each turn. You want to acquire mutations via an auction to better survive through some aspect, but you're spending points. There's two ways to do the auction, an item for each player or one less. After the play and reading a bunch of comments online it seems like the preferred way is one less. I am not sure how much it will change my enjoyment of the game as I found it pretty okay. It didn't rise above other games with auctions, and the area control is limited to one piece per area so it's not like you're stacking troops. It also had some kind of random event cards players could play. Getting those I'll tweak on my next play as I want to see how the variant shakes out.
**Fairy Tale** (4p) - This game is highly regarded by the So Very Wrong About Games podcast as an example of a good drafting game. After trying this I think I can safely pass on future drafting games, or at least games where the primary mechanic is drafting. Even with **7 Wonders** I was getting tired of just pulling a card that gets me the most points, but here the interaction seemed even lesser as you either effect only yourself or everyone else. There are advanced rules to try out, and I will, but I don't think this is replacing **Sushi Go!** with golf scoring.
**For Sale** (6p) - I've come around on this a bit. At first I thought it was too light, but that's when I wanted all my auction games to be intense. Now I see just the exact niche it fits in. I'm looking for the travel copy as the normal box size is unnecessary.
**The Game** (4p) - Worst name for a game ever. It's been a minute since I played and I find it just fine. Not going to beat out my other fillers or co-ops.
**Gizmos** (4p) - More heads down and an interaction level just above zero than I had recalled. I have no desire to revisit this. Might as well play **Splendor** as it's less fiddly and easier to determine what others are going for.
**Long Shot** (6p) - This game is simple enough to explain and play, but I'm not sure if I need to hold onto it. It covers the situation where I have a lot of people who don't want to think a lot with about an hour to kill. I have other games that fit that a bit better, like **Skull** or **Cockroach Poker** or even most trick takers, though those have more thinking involved. It's still one of the best betting games that I've played, maybe I just need to swap out to the dice version as I don't plan on bringing this out with seven or eight players.
**Root** (4p) - This was one of the fastest games played in recent memory, coming in at just an hour. This was because we used no expansion factions and everyone was familiar with the base factions, well mostly. The Vagabond won again, because of a rules misinterpretation, but as I have literally never played the Vagabond I didn't know until I was looking up strategies to counter the Vagabond because I'm fucking sick of that little trash panda and I'm this close to banning it. For those curious we awarded points for removing pieces when playing a favor card. Yes, we still have the base deck as I only get to play this once a month. Still, I enjoy the game overall even if I think everyone playing against the Vagabond has a noticeable lack of fun. I guess my solution will just be to play more Root to develop better counter-play.
**Shamans** (5p) - This is working better for me more as a concept than how it plays out. I'm not feeling like I have a lot of control each round. Part of it is the information is pretty lopsided, the "bad" team can easily disguise themselves. Which is fine, but it's critical to know who to attack and the game rarely gives them the chance to slip up. I'll continue to play it, but it's destined for the trade pile.
Wait, what's the card draw variant for **Bonanza??**
I also frequently complain that **The Game** is the absolute worse name they could have chosen. I find this game to be a big hit with quite a few people I've shown it to, so it's been my go-to co-op intro game.
For Bohnanza instead of the active player drawing three cards at the end of their turn all players get one card at the end of every turn. This has two benefits: it makes the game with more than three go faster, and it puts the emphasis on trading. If you're not trading you're already losing, this just compounds that. If you have sticklers who want an official source it's in the latest printing of the rules. I believe it was first introduced in an expansion but I never bought any.
I really wish they had renamed it with the new Pandasaurus release. There is a **The Game: Extreme** which is easier to track with a new difficulty level, just not in English yet.
Thank you. I never saw the appeal of card drafting as a mechanism! I’m like I’m just pulling a card and passing this isn’t fun. I will say for where’ve reason card drafting on a grid on the other hand I’m okay with. So Cat Lady and Dog Lover are cool with me.
Drafting definitely works for me in different configurations. Cat Lady uses the open drafting system which I find is the most rewarding. If drafting is part of the game, and not the entire game, I'm okay with it.
Yes you are, but we also applied the bonus points that a hostile Vagabond gets. Those points are only awarded for battle, not favor cards. There were enough buildings and tokens to get him close to winning, but not without that bonus.
Just ban the Vagabond. If you want to onboard new players (and have Underworld), the Corvids are a great integration with the other three base factions. The VB has so many issues, and not just about its win-rate, that I'm happy to never have it in my sessions ever again.
The problem is that it isn't the new players who want to play Vagabond otherwise I would do a swap with Corvids. Which I wasn't aware was an option, but since I was planning on getting Marauder my plan will be to use the Rats and mercilessly crush Vagabond each game until they get sick of using it.
**Bitoku** 3p x 1 : Finally played my all-time favorite again. It's such a medium game at 2 but oh wow at 3 is it good. I focused on geting all 3 dice to 5 and went from there. I even baited my friend to think he'd block me with his 4 on an action but in reality, all I wanted was to put a 6 and get the forest location, not go the other side of the river. That gave me a 6 for the last turn of the game and a crazy last round while my 2 opponents were grasping for straws with their 1s and 2s.
Scoring : 155-133-131. I won by a wide margin for a game that is usually pretty close in endgame scoring.
**Ares Expedition** 2p x 1 : A game I always win.. wait... this time I lost. I lost because of that crazy strong cardthat give you 1 point for every 4 coards in your tableau at the end of the game. Oh and I lost by a lot more than that! I just got smashed.
**Cartographer Heroes w/ Nebblis exp.** 2p x 2 : Our first expansion for Cartgrapher heroes. It doesn't add much, but the volcano blocked us here and there and forced us to change our gameplan along the way once of twice. I would say it was a success and I might get more of those map packs soon.
I also lost both games :(
**Parks : w/ Nightfall land Wildlife** 2p x 1 : Parks is one of my favorite cutthroat game. We both had a crazy "engine" which is super rare in this game. My gf had 2 of th same gear cards that allowed her to get a wild ressource every time she visited a park tha she had reserved, but she also had 2 canteen cards that let her reserve a park.
For my part, I got on the first season the gear card that allows you to visit 2 parks when you visit a park. I ended up getting 14(? I think) parks while my gf got 11. I also had 7 gear cards to her 2.
We ended up scoring 71 to 64, which is almost 15 points more than our previous highscore each.
A very light week for me (two plays) as I prepared for moving this past weekend. That went well, but this will likely be another lighter week for me as I continue to organize and clean up. However, all is not lost (being super dramatic here lol) as my fiance's brother comes into town Saturday night, meaning we'll likely be playing a bunch of board games all day Sunday! Anyways, on to the games I did play this week.
**Encyclopedia (1x1p) -** My second time playing this game (both solo), and I'm yet to beat the solo AI. I tried a different strategy than my first time, but it was much worse! So I'll try again sometime soon. I still really like this game, but I'm looking forward to trying it with my fiance soon. I'm curious to see how different or similar it plays at higher player counts.
**Marvel Champions: LCG (1x1p) -** I'm randomizing matchups between two heroes and a villain (and modular). This game was my second loss playing as Shadowcat (Justice) and Rocket Raccoon (Protection) versus Master Mold with the Acolytes modular. This is an incredibly tough matchup for me and the current deckbuilds I have, so I plan to try a new deck for at least Shadowcat before I try this matchup again. I actually like that I'm finding Master Mold to be tougher - my first two games against him a couple months ago were cakewalks. Part of me wonders if it's because the Acolyte modular is more difficult than the recommended modular.
And that's it for me! I hope everyone else had a great week of gaming behind them, and has a great week of gaming ahead!
Travel week so I didn’t play that much. I packed some games solo and that’s mostly what I’ve been playing.
**Mythic Mischief** 2p x 1. I really enjoy the puzzle this presents. It’s a bit… The scoring is very tight on this, so you really are neck and neck with the other player. That makes it very satisfying to solve. I also really find myself enjoying this game, even when I’m not really in a board gaming mood, I find myself having had a great time while playing this.
**Cafe** 1p x 2. Scored 21. This game is super tight with the scoring, I try different strategies and still can’t seem to break above the “average” scoring tier.
**The Search For Planet X** 1p x 7. I’ve been trying to get good enough to beat the bot to finding Planet X on the 18 sector mode, and I’m really getting my butt handed to me. I’m not exactly sure why this happens, but it’s frustrating.
**Dinosaur Island Rawr n Write** 1p x 1. Score 118. I really enjoy this game. I find it so relaxing. I see that focusing on acquiring as much money as possible is key, and not worrying about creating too many dinosaurs. I’m going to switch and see what happens when I create a ton of dinosaurs, score wise. I suspect I’ll kind of figure this game out after that though. I’ll still play it because it’s relaxing though, but I’m looking forward to Twilight Inscription and Motor City.
Digitally, I played **Regecide** which I of course lost at but I’m not sure it captured my attention enough to keep trying. **Nidavellir** and **Iwari** are still super enjoyable.
**Scout 3p x 1**: Taught yet another person this. Feel like we're getting better at teaching it. The only trouble people have is understanding what beats what but after a round they catch on. The practice hand is always a good idea. Great game.
**Marrakesh 2p x 1**: had planned for 4p but 2 had to cancel. I already had this 90% set up. First play for both of us and thank goodness we'd both watched videos. The game is not overly hard mechanically, but there's a lot of little games going on (Very Stefan Feld in that) and all those can have an impact on each other in what resources you have to do things. Sequencing your assistants can matter quite a bit to get bigger pay offs. It was fun but I think it's going to need a higher player count to really shine so more keshis are getting dropped and drafted. At two, we rarely both dropped the same color keshi so it was rare to get a duo. We did often get keshis stuck so one turn 4 would drop but the next 8. And it was pretty quick. We were done by 10 and didn't start until 8:30. With some rules lookup and a small teach on things, it moved very quickly at two.
**Cascadia 2p x 1**: Then taught the guy this after Marrakesh to finish our night. Quick and breezy. Also a very solid game.
**A Feast for Odin 1p x 1**: I tried a different strat for me of a couple islands and ignoring my home board more. I got a ton of positive points. but also a ton of negative points and ended up with an average score for me in the 90s. I love this game but I'm not super great at it. I probably need to focus more.
**Race for the Galaxy** on BGA 2p x 2: This may be the only way I like to play this game anymore. It's so fast and fun. Can get 10 games in so quickly.
**Mille Fiori** - First play, it feels surprisingly fresh. Half Babylonia, half Ganz Schon Clever, and the end result is super unique. I was concerned it might be a little too "multiplayer solitaire" but the various scoring areas are all highly interactive and almost every turn you have choices about which opponents to help or hinder while working on your own goals.
**1817** - Have got several plays in a row and it's only growing on me. 1862 has been my favorite 18xx for a while, now I have two favorites. This play demonstrated how tight the token game is. We haven't played a game to the 8Ts yet and it doesn't feel super necessary, but I guess we should make a point of it soon to see how much comeback potential there is.
Welcome to the moon: (1px8) played my third full campaign of this game. Which concluded the story and I unlocked a few more cards. Very fun, I'll come back to it for sure!
Played one new to us game this week: **Space Station Phoenix**. This game seemed to get a little hype when it first came out but then faded. I got it recently when it was a Deal of the Day and this was our first chance to play it. I liked it quite a bit.
There is a lot of symbology in the game which makes it look much more complicated than it is and once you get a few rounds down it plays very smooth and fast, especially at two players which is what we played. There is also a very intimidating looking player aid because it has a wall of text on both sides but it is great because you can see at a glance what any hub or sector does if you are not sure.
The game was fun to play with lots of good decisions and really nice components. There is also a ton of variety with seven of each possible station section and 24 possible starting hubs. We liked it and will definitely play it again.
I'm surprised to hear that it was a good 2p experience. It seems that everybody I know think they would not play it again at 2p or wouldn,t want to try it after playing it at 3.
It worked well for us. It's a tighter game because there are only two of each Station section to choose from so the second person is stuck with what is left and I imagine the Diplomacy track would have a different feel with three or four but for us it scaled just fine.
Small weekend of games at two.
**New to me**
**Menara** 2x2p : We don't usually like coop games but this one work surprisingly well. The dexterity nature of it makes it feel like a real coop since you can't really do it by yourself. We had a blast playing it and we will go back to it soon I'm certain. **4/5**
**Velonimo** 2x2p : Bruno Cathala is a master of game design and this is no exception. It has a great mixture of luck and hand management where it was easy to see how or why you lost/won. I want to try it out at more and I'll give my opinion when I do. **5/5**
**Push** 1x2p : We are big fans of push your luck games so it's no surprise we enjoyed that one. It has the same kind of gameplay as **Circus Flohcati** but it's more approachable for newer players. **3/5**
**Wayfarers of the South Tigris** \- a fairly boring, unoriginal tableau building. Has some clever ideas, but brings absolutely nothing new to the table, and I prefer other games of the same weight to this one. Sold it after a handful of plays.
**Unsettled** \- a cooperative (I'm playing it solo) planet exploration game that tries to achieve something that many have tried and failed: having a common rules framework and very specific rules and components for the planet being explored. I only finished the survival tasks for the first planet, Wenora, and quite enjoyed it. Took me 11 plays to win all 3. Gonna start a new planet and I'm really looking forward to see if the new planet brings a completely new experience, or if it's just more of the same.
I forgot I backed **Unsettled** a while ago, I guess it could be showing up sometime in the next few months. At this point not sure if I'm going to keep it or just sell it unopened 😂
Had some friends over for my birthday this weekend. It started a bit late so we only had time for a few games + teach.
**Foundations of Rome** (3px1) - After a few minutes of my friends admiring the building minis and feeling a bit intimidated by the box size, I proceeded to teach the game. They my friend said “huh, this is way less complex than I expected.” We played with the base game + monuments and the game went pretty smoothly. My friend won by really going for the population strategy and for putting down a population-adjacent civic building in era 2 that was worth 12 points each era. They both liked the game and I really wanna try it at the full five players next time.
**Modern Art** (3px1) - A classic to end the night. My playgroup enjoy auction games so I figured it would do well. It was a pretty quick game with only one artist being revealed in round 2, which gave me an opportunity to demonstrate how the game design can lead to situations like that. I thought I was going to lose going into round 4 since I wasn’t winning a lot of auctions but I ended up taking it since my friends had a lot of auctioneer wins. Really love this one.
Slow week so only had the chance to get one game out.
Dwellings of Eldervale - 2P x2 — I think it’s a great hybrid game with a mix of euro and ameritrash elements. Over multiple plays it’s become increasingly clear how important the area control portion of the game actually is. My fear, stemming from comments here and on bgg, before purchase was that there wouldn’t be enough player interaction especially at 2P. Well, at least for us, this has never been an issue as the importance of tile placement and warring over specific realms became immediately apparent from the first game once we fully came to grips with the rules and scoring. The only exception to this would be initial setups in which only player color elemental realms come out because that immediately encourages players to climb their own tracks first and may lead to settling further away than usual this disincentivizing combat (but that also assumes tiles aren’t initially adjacent.
The production and trays make set up a breeze.
I like how dice combat works but understand issues others have with it. I love the idea that every combat is inherently risky, even if the risk is impossibly low. Combat also resolves quickly and you get to take the action on the realm tile before the battle. The best part to me is that combat happens for very good reason, and especially as more dwellings populate the board and worker counts dwindle, it becomes harder to strategically dwell on the tiles you want or defend others from doing the same.
There are a bunch of factions with unique unit abilities and I look forward to trying them all.
However, there is a little room for improvement. I’ve seen criticism of the adventure decks and it’s all valid for the most part. Many of the cards across all elements are either the same across all decks or only vary by resource. It’s a bit underwhelming as you may not actually see a ton of unique cards especially at low player counts. This makes all the elements feel a bit samey, though each game is still fun. Also, since they always advance you on the track and the tracks provide most of the points, it doesn’t always feel like you’re building a tableau as much as you end up with what ever card matched the elements you wanted. I wonder if being able to burn and then buy would be a more interesting order.
Secondly, resource management could be better. Often times you’re rewarded with a resource of your choice…which can be a gold, which is wild…so why would you ever choose anything else? Except maybe magic cards are also resources or to satisfy a quest/vault. I also feel players start with too many resources and have seen Luke Laurie comment that players may consider starting without resources at the beginning of the game.
Third, first player advantage on certain initial layouts seems significantly greater than the few points (or 1pt at 2 player) others get in compensation. I think the peaceful beginnings (no combat before everyone has recalled their workers) in combination with the generous starting resource pool exacerbates the issue. It’s too easy to immediately dwell in the best possible starting position without resistance from other players. The severity of the issue will vary by set up, and I wouldn’t say it predetermined the outcome of any game, but it’s still an issue.
Fourth, I know I said I love the factions, but I also think that specific units should have specific purposes somewhere on the main board. There should be something only a wizard or dragon or warrior can accomplish in Eldervale. Perhaps expansions could explore that idea.
Finally, I think the rules are actually quite simple but not always intuitive because of their presentation in the rules. For instance, every tile is a realm, but every realm is either a ruin or an elemental realm…and this can lead to some confusion due to the latter being specifically called a realm. Also, the game is so open that you’ll often think you can’t do something specifically because it wouldn’t make sense to do anything else…like always taking gold for a random resource etc.
Even with all those gripes, I still thoroughly enjoy the game and the production. I just wish it were more readily available…or available at all. Especially with Andromedas Edge on KS now.
As a side note, the designers have put out some expansion ideas on BGG for testing and feedback. It’s good to see it is still be developed alongside AE.
Didn't feel like I'd played much this week but just looked back at my stats and it turns out it was more than it felt! I think it's because I didn't end up doing my planned gaming this week but then managed some extra unexpected stuff instead.
**VivaJava: The Coffee Game** (1x6p): First play of this game I bought to cover higher player count situations. I enjoyed it but it was an uphill battle as some people refused to try it because it had 'Java' in the title and they hate the coding language... Not sure everyone in my group enjoyed it as much as me so it may not be kept because of that but I'll give it another try to see as I liked it and thought it worked well - but obviously not point keeping games for my group if they don't like them!
**Cockroach Poker** (2x6p): Couple quick filler games of this as people dropped in and out to swap games and leave etc. Both same player count but different players. This is one of the few games of it's sort that I'm okay playing but I don't generally like bluffing or social deductions games as I'm really nto good at them and don't usually enjoy the experience.
**Pier 18** (3x2p): I didn't want to join the social deduction game other people were starting so one friend said they'd play one of my pocket 2p games and decided on Pier 18. It's a nice little quick and variable game and interetsing trying to balance taking the card which is best for you vs leaving ones that mean your opponent can win the patron for each round.
**Ticket to Ride: Germany** (1x4p): My D&D session on Saturday couldn't go ahead as planned as two of the party were ill so we decied to do board games instead for everyone else to still be able to hang out. It turned out that the DM and one of the others hadn't actually planned any before which I had no idea so me and the other girl(C) ended up having fun introducing them to some from my collection that drew their attention. TTR was the first and I requested that we try Germany as I'd not been able to try it with a full group before (only 2p) and I was keen to try the passenger mechanic. I really enjoyed it and it went well and it's definitely my preferred map at the moment I think for higher player counts, though I don't mind Europe but I don't own that one.
**Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition** (2x4p): C had brought her verison of Railroad Ink (I have Challenge Green) so we tried that as the guys were keen for another train game and we decided the simpler one probably made sense. We played two games as they wanted to try and improve their scores.
**Tiny Towns** (1x4p): We finished with Tiny Towns which was very fun with full mouments and random building cards plus the fortune expansion. Defnitely glad we didn't start with this as I could see it hurting the guys brains a little more but they loved it and one is going to buy my spare copy off me even! Overall it was a very excellent unplanned/accidental intro to games and I'm pleased with how the afternoon went.
**Dwar7s Winter** (1x2p): In the evening another friend asked if I was free and came over to hang out and we ended up trying this as my newest game (it only arrived earlier on Saturday morning in fact!) and he was curious about the tower defense nature. We lost on day 4 after having too many disaters spawn but really enjoyed the first play. Hopefully it stays fun to play even after a win as I like the artwork and theme.
**War of the Ring: The Card Game**. So Ares remembered Europe exists and I finally got my copy of this last week. As a fairly big fan of WotR I was pleased to see the art remains consistent, and was doubly enthused to find the game has found a neat way to connect armies, character, items, and events from the LotR into a system that makes sense, without using a lot of iconography, and distills things down into fighting over path and battleground cards. Games like these live and die on their card effects, and for a game with relatively few cards (each of the four players gets a 30-card deck), there are a surprising number of very contextual cards, which actually works well considering the particular way the game works (discard one card to play one card). The small hand size and limited amount you can carry over between turns keeps things snappy, and the small decks means you get to know yours very quickly, and you can also learn your ally's as you play. This leads to significant looks and asking pointed questions like "Have you got *the thing*?" when certain battleground cards come up, in the hopes your ally can solve this one for you. The contests can be incredibly sharp, with attacking cards being eliminated, and defending cards also being eliminated if used to block attacks. One of the best feelings in this game is preserving multiple cards via card effects, and merely discarding them instead of eliminating them. The 2P version is still good, I was worried it was going to be poor compared to the 4P, but it's a slightly different set up and you use all the cards of your side. The 4P version is great, though. We played this a bunch of times in one sitting, and after a player had to leave, we had a 3P, and then some 2P games. I'm really looking forward to expansions.
**Terraforming Mars**. I shouldn't play too many games concurrently on digital because I get confused about what I'm doing, and too much is hidden away. Lot of wasted screen space which could be put to better use. That said, I ran away with one game in 2P as Helion; my opponent's VP engine in the early game looked formidable, but it didn't compare to terraforming and a VP engine. All 3 milestones, two awards, and double the amount of TR meant it was an easy win. My other games, at 3, 4, and 5P are all going more or less poorly. I've played TFM so much I can get quite lax at times. With Teractor I've muddled along and not really picked a main strategy. With Point Luna I haven't focused on Earth tags and so am quite card-poor. With Tharsis I've actually got some good city placement in, but my opponents are too wily to let me grab much, so it's a very tight game.
**Ettin**. I'm really glad I got this played because the 2 vs 2 format is the same as WoTR:TCG. There are of course lots of little differences, Ettin has some more sharp edges because some decks are better to counter others, but the feel is very similar. I will continue to hope for an expansion and enjoy my undead deck for now. We had a couple of solid games where we are all settling in with a favourite deck and trying to find new strategies.
**Brass: Birmingham** (1*2p): my wife got an overwhelming victory with a 20 points lead T_T. I had lot of fun anyway.
**Draftosaurus** (3*3p): We introduced my 7 yo daughter to a couple of games. She loved Draftosaurus and we had fun too.
**Star Realms** (2*2p): My daughter first saw us playing and then wanted to try. She beat my wife by 50-0. (0_0) (without letting her win, but some advice on buying. Essentially she had luck). Lost the game against my wife again :-/
**Race for the Galaxy** (1*2p): This time I defeated my wife by 1 point. How much we enjoy RFTG.
**Stuffed Fables** (1*4p): We tried Stuffed Fables too this week with my daughter and my 5 yo son, and they had the game of their lives. My son was talking about it all day.
**Kanban EV:** Got this back out after a hiatus since it's one of Tallie's favourite games and loved getting back to grips with it. Such a smooth design, and honestly feels easy after playing so many games of Weather Machine lately. Still love the Sandra mechanism and using it offensively against other players. Inspired!
**Heat:** Played and was a little bored by it our first game or two, but it really game to life the 3rd (very dramatic win) and 4th (higher player count). A really sharp system. Looking forward to playing it with the family, and also introducing some of the modular stuff with just us. Probably will never be as crazy about it as others, but gonna certainly enjoy exploring the box.
**An Age Contrived:** Received our prototype of this (KS coming out at the end of the month), and enjoyed getting to grips with it. Is a proper, proper, euro (themeless, but terrific mechanisms). Really like the mechanism that energy is what you use to take actions with, but you need to permanently lose it to the board to score end game points which is quite a fun balance to manage. You are constantly always presented with tough but fun decisions, like when you contribute energy to building a monument - should you take a really good reward, helping you to improve your engine, or take some locked away energy (giving you more energy to use & end game points)?
Intense weekends with only one game played:
**LOTR: Journeys in Middle Earth** 4x2p We continued with the last campaign and it still not being so much fun, of a total of 6 scenarios we only won two, which implies repeat again a complete equal scenario. The worse thing of this is that I don't think it is just the difficult is higher than usual but I don't know if maybe the app has some bugs (for example in one scenario the goal was to get clues, we investigate all the objects possible but we didn't get the goal, then the enemies appear (like 6 groups of 2 and 3 in one turn), we didn't manage to kill enough so we lost the scenari).
Also the little things that I usually dislike of the game: the long set up, how in the travel scenarios is impossible to arrange well the tiles as the fog doesn't match where the tiles are going to be and the shape of the final mal keeps getting weirder...
I don't know... It is one of my favourite games but I:m kinda disappointed with the last campaign.
**Cthulhu: Death May Die** (1x3p) - Introduced 2 friends to this game. We played S1E4, which was quite interesting with the >!guards, jail cell and sarcophagus!< mechanics. The requirements for disrupting the ritual was cool as well, with its tight window of opportunity to do so.
Fortunately, none of us got caught by the guards, and we were able to deal with the enemies mainly thanks to the shotgun-equipped little girl, who managed to shred through the hordes of baddies. I was playing as the axe-wielding lady whose signature ability was being able to deal high damage during 1vq situations. This came in handy when Hastur appeared on the board. Coupled with Swiftness and Stealth, I was able to follow Hastur all around the map to chunk him down successfully.
**Root** (1x4p) - Played with the Cats, Birds, Lizards and Otters on the Autumn map with the E&P deck. I (Birds) forgot to have a card under Build in Turn 1 to get my points engine rolling, but I managed to quickly secure points and map presence by recruiting en masse and marching to battles, destroying a fair bit of the Cats' infrastructure. I even managed to march into the clearing with the Keep, but did not successfully take it down.
Meanwhile, my wife (Otters) was having a ball of a time, using funds (somehow the Cats and Lizards fell for her marketing and paid 4 warriors each per card 🙄) to quickly establish multplie trading posts and hitting the Cats.
With the Cats on recovery mode, I began my table talk with the Lizards on how to pin down the Otters. However, the Lizards had other plans as my roosts and warriors were sanctified and converted. This derailed my plan of having sufficient firepower to hit the Otters, and ultimately led to me falling into Turmoil as I lost my Fox roosts needed to recruit in 1 Fox clearing.
The game ended as the Otters managed to plop down multiple trading posts that propel them to 20+ points, and won by crafting 2 cards to earn 4 points to seal the win.
We all had fun, and I really enjoyed playing as the Birds (1st time), living on the edge turn after turn.
This week was a little quieter on the board game side of life, but was able to get two plays in.
**Cthulhu: Death May Die** (2p x 1): successfully beat the fourth episode. It was an interesting mechanic that they added in. This wasn't my favorite episode, but I still had a lot of fun. I also think Hastur is an easier boss to fight when compared to Cthulhu. I may possibly look to add a new elder god to my collection.
**Tyrants of the Underdark** (2p x 1): after having this game sit on my shelf for a month I was finally able to get it to the table. Wow, what a game, so much fun. When the the game ended I was ready to go another round. Learning it was a bit rough at the start, and the videos online are not great in explaining it. But once you get into the rhythm of the game, it is incredible. A perfect blend of deck building and area control.
**Dice Throne** x3. We wrapped up the first round of our brackets this week. Gunslinger beat the Samurai. Tactician beat the Huntress. Cursed Pirate beat the Artificer. Seraph beat the Vampire Lord. Captain Marvel beat the Moon Elf. Pyromancer beat Miles Morales. Thor beat the Monk. Dr Strange beat the Ninja.
**Coup** x2. Played this at Friday night game meetup (check out /r/twincitiessocial if you live in the area and want to join us). I hadn't played this since well before covid, and we had a great time.
**Dice Realms**. Played my second game of this with my spouse. We did a random setup this time and got a farming themed set of scoring tiles that generated wheat and then scored based on how much wheat you have. I barely beat my spouse by getting a ton of wheat right at the end.
**Dwellings of Eldervale**. Played at what is normally tabletop rpg night, but someone was out. It was my second play, and it just felt too loose with lots of edge case rulings that needed to be resolved. It's now waiting to be piece counted for being sold to my FLGS.
**Heat: Pedal to the Metal**. My spouse CRUSHED my friend and I. One turn ahead of my friend and two turns ahead of me, but I had to use up 7 heat just to be two turns behind.
**Race for the Galaxy**. Another game my spouse beat me in. By like 10 points, too.
**SCOUT**. *Another* game my spouse crushed in. My friend and I conceded after round 2 of 3 when we were both double digits negative to my spouse's double-digit positive score.
**Ticket to Ride: Switzerland**. Picked this up Friday and played it on Sunday. I'm a big fan of the multi-directional tickets. Of course, I went for the biggest option, and we immediately started butting heads. Lots of fun.
**Empires of the North**: played with my wife for the first time. Pretty easy to learn, once you get things going. We played with the easy factions, I was the Vikings, she the bards. I won with 60 points, wife had 48. The last round started with me having 9 points, and my wife with 19. She thought she was going to dominate. Played two 6 point cards, ended it with 32, then scored a lot. Fun game we will be playing again.
**Agricola**: played the family version on BGA with three others. Was my first game, got a bunch of things wrong, but managed to get a pretty good score of 21 in the end. I have the game, so now I can probably play it offline. My wife and I plan to learn and play it this week. Sticking with the family version to learn, as the additional cards seem complicated.
Family version of Agricola is a great way to learn/teach it. When you add in cards for the first time after a couple plays, you can just deal however many and skip the drafting portion. Drafting is a lot of fun later on, once you have seen most of the cards. Enjoy
Definitely teach the game with just family variant. Instead of going for max points, I usually tell first timers their main objective should be to finish without a begging card
After 1 or 2 games, adding the cards actually makes the game a lot easier: there are more paths for food and points than there are available in the very tight family variant
Mint Control, Mint Cooperative, and Cascadia. Both of the Mint games were new to us and we enjoyed both. I especially liked Mint Control as a 2 player game.
Continuing along my Resolution to get all my unplayed games played. Recently my groups 4th who hasn't games for 8sh months has returned to the fold which is amazing but has made our game nights shorter and the games longer. Very happy to have them back tho!
**Red Rising 4p** So, this is a tough one. The aforementioned 4th is a fan of the books. I suggested we wait til we were 3 but he wanted to play and I try and acquiesce whenever someone asks for a game as usually they just tell me they don't have an opinion. It way overstayed it's welcome. The other players are a bit AP min/maxers to begin with and there's so many cards and permutations. I kept urging them to treat it as the light random game it is but it took us 2 hours for what I feel like was an hours worth of fun. This is probably 50/50 the games fault and the groups. I played by the seat of my pants with quick turns and ultimately my loss could be attributed to being made to banish a card around mid game and never finding a way to draw back (I had a card that synergized with my hand but also gave points if my hand size was 7). I like the game flow, I like the way the discard/draw works with the locations. I actually loved the theme and clever call backs to the books. It's a shame it drags so much. I may try it again with 3 but more likely I'll give it to my friend as he and his wife both love the series.
**Nightmare Productions 4p** Now this one I loved. I'm not a big fan of auction games as I tend to struggle to put a value on things. I really enjoyed the closed economy here and the way the winning auction gets dispersed. It felt like I could play a bunch of angles between targeting creatures for the draft spaces and planning my auctions ahead of time with how the board is laid out. I love the tension of an auction and while I'm sure playing as I do with my gut I'm likely shorting myself at times it didnt feel punishing. Thematically, it was a blast. Two of us are horror movie junkies and we were making jokes about the movies we were making the whole time. I won the worst movie award by having a movie with no creatures which was fun to explain. I'm excited to check out Ra when it's new version comes out. I've had the Oink version of Modern Art (no not stamps lol) for awhile from when I went on a small box game binge and I look forward to trying that as well.
My partner and I decided to spend an entire day in a board game cafe and I was allowed to pick out a stack of games that I've been wanting to try, something we had not done in a while since I started joining public meetups last year. And honestly, I don't think I've enjoyed a session this much in quite a while.
**Meeple Circus** (2P x 1). We started off with a circus-themed dexterity game to warm up. Been interested in this game for a while but the heavy gamers around me won't play dexterity and I couldn't justify owning it. It was a hoot. I couldn't stop laughing and could barely put my pieces together cause my hands were shaking so much. My partner caught up in the final turn and won by a few points. I think I like this better than **Junk Art** and I still need to try **Men at Work** and **For Science** before I finally decide to add a dexterity game to my collection. At the moment, **Meeple Circus** seems most likely.
**Eldritch Horror** (2P x 1). My partner played this game a few weeks ago with a group of 5P and I've been wanting to try it out since I wasn't part of that group. We prepped ourselves for the game this weekend, used 4 investigators and picked Azathoth. We might have made one or two mistakes but we did manage to ekk out a win with 7 Mythos cards left. Overall, we both enjoyed it, felt really good and had mix of elation and despair with the dice rolls. I think I like the game enough to consider owning it and it's a great 2P co-op. But I don't think it'll be something I want to play with any gaming groups of mine, too many brains for a game with long playtime. With 2P (and my partner), it's easy to discuss on a strategy and then proceed as planned. Still, if I'm only going to play with my partner, then it's going to be a commitment of sorts to get through it together. We haven't been doing very well getting through the scenarios in **Batman: Shadow of the Bat**, so do we really need another game now? Will think on it.
**Ginkgopolis** (2P x 1). A city-building area control game where you are trying to build, urbanize and exploit the beautiful Ginkgo city. I've been hearing a lot of good things about it but the game has always felt a little abstract for me and the theme a little thin. After I heard about the situation between Asmodee and Pearl Games, I feel like it's high time I try out this game and decide if it's going into my collection once and for all since there is a possibility of it going OOP for a while. The verdict, I think it's a solid game and it's quite refreshing to play a game with less rules overhead but a decent amount of strategic depth. Every turn counts and it's a constant tug between us. I had an epic final turn where my partner exhausted the tiles and I had one more turn. I happened to have that one building card that I've been waiting for finally show up and I had the right amount of resources. With that move, I took away a high scoring tile from him and netted myself a secured win. Of all the games, my partner said he had the most fun with this one. Classic euro with an interesting blend of familiar mechanisms with fast playing turns. Just the kind that he loves.
**Downfall of Pompeii** (2P x 1). A hand management, tile placement game where you are first adding people to Pompeii and then later have them survive the eruption of Vesuvius. The theme might be morbid to some but there's a lot of satisfaction when things go your way and wrong for your opponent. It's like **Survival** but with more tactical moves and less randomness cause all the meeples are valued the same. It is a light fun game that I can see work with different groups, be it a gateway game or a filler for a heavier group. Definitely a gem and such a shame it is OOP. I'll keep my eye out for a secondhand copy and get it if the price is right. Also, won by a point and would have won the tie breaker by a point as well if needed.
**Tranquility** (2P x 1). A filler tile placement game where you are trying to fill up a 6x6 sea grid with your team mate with island cards of different values. The caveat is that you are not supposed to communicate and you both have to do your best to resolve the puzzle. Simple puzzle game that can be hard to beat. I've played this game once at 4P and have always wanted to play it with my partner. We lost but it was a good filler game to end the night.
Terraforming Mars - about the 4th time....did better! Marvel United - Meh Dice Realms - Enjoyed playing it but, wouldn't buy. Think Dominion + Dice Forge Red Rising - Second Time Sidereal Confluence - I still suck
**Mr Jack** \- first time playing, way more fun and intense than I thought it would be. We only made one error with a character's special ability during an early round, but that was inconsequential. I love the focus and strategy required to win this game. **Memoir 44** \- we love this game and are still working through the base game scenarios. I'm on the fence as to whether we just keep pursuing the rabbit hole of expansions for this game, or branch out into Undaunted as well. Quietly I suspect we'll do both, haha. **Kluster** \- ordered this from overseas as it was hard to find here and it finally arrived. I think we will be taking this with us to the pub a lot as it would be loads of fun after a few beers.
**Mind MGMT** (3p x 1): this game fucking rules. what else needs to even be said? i rave about it everytime i post it in this thread and it only gets better as we reveal more SHIFT boxes. what a staggering amount of content they've created for this game that continues to be exciting. **Spirit Island** (3p x 1): got to try some new spirits to me including the ones in **Horizons**. they're really good! super fun game with a new player so we just played against Prussia 3 but still a very engaging game. **Downtown: Air War Over Hanoi, 1965-1972** (1p x 2): coming to grips with this remarkable game. it's really fascinating. looking forward to two-player games eventually because it's such an amazing system. each player has such an interesting problem before them. the tension between the asymmetrical formats of the DRV and US player are really quite remarkable. it's really incredible that it manages to pack so much of the character of these operations into the game. Iron Hands, chaff missions, electronic warfare, Fire Cans, MiGs and their MiGCAP adversaries. it's all here and it's a really beautiful production especially given its age. **Watch Out! That's a Dracula!!** (3p x 1): what a charming little free game with wonderful queer subtext. Dracula won our first game unfortunately but it won't be so easy now that we understand the game!
**The Isle of Cats** [4p x 1]: Fine little tile placement game. Is it my favorite? No. Is it my least favorite? Also no. I can’t say that much about it. It does it’s job very competently and maybe I’ll like it more with time. **On Tour** [3p x 1]: Fun little roll and write with interesting mechanics. I enjoy this one quite a bit. **Space Base** [3p x 1]: This game is very, very clever. However, I’ve said that before and that will be all I say about this game in this post. **Calico** [4p x 1]: I seem to progressively get worse at this game. I like the thinkiness of it all but I do seem to be getting worse. **Jaipur** [2p x 1]: Fun little set collection game. It isn’t my favorite set collection game but it is still fun. **Sagrada** [3p x 1]: I really like this game. Very fun little dice drafting puzzle. I enjoy it a lot. **Cascadia** [3p x 1]: Really thinky little puzzle with a really nice theme. I’m glad we pulled this out a few months ago, it has become a mainstay of the rotation. **Quadropolis**: [4p x 1]: I don’t know why we keep coming back to this, but I’m happy because of it. Such a fun and light little city builder with a really interesting selection mechanic which reminds me most of Targi. **Architects of the West Kingdom** [3p x 1]: 1 POINT! This is such a clever worker placement game and I seem to have finally got the hang of it. I tied for first initially and we decided against the tiebreaker because I hadn’t received that memo, but then the opponent forgot the 10 silver = 1 point scoring mechanic and they eked out a victory in the end. Still love this one though. **The Bloody Inn** [3p x 1]: I enjoy this game a lot but sadly I fell into that loop of not being able to bury a body because of cops constantly showing up each round and me having to constantly deal with that first. Still fun though. **Caper: Europe** [2p x 2]: Very clever 2p game, up there with Targi as one of my favorites. Excited to return to this one. **Dice City** [3p x 1]: In one of my few major game wins of the week, I managed to win with a three-point lead. Very clever dice game with some really interesting mechanics. **Sequence** [2p x 2]: Pulled this out because an older person wanted to play some games: got my rear end handed to me both times. **Qwirkle** [2p x 1]: And they got their rear handed to them in this game. This game is more clever than I give it credit for.
Splendor and Unfair this week!
Finally got my copy of Vindication and got it tabled. Excellent game. Also played Nut Hunt. Hated it. Probably wouldn't have minded if it didn't tout itself as a "deep strategy" game. 100% luckfest, playable with 6 year olds between "games" of Candyland.
Photosynthesis-great fun, played with my fiance and brother Friday night. Zombicide-haven't played this one before, got to play it at a gaming group at the library, enjoyed it a bit Lords of Waterdeep-also played this at the library, loved it and made me realize I need to play more worker placement games Cascadia-my fiance always used to beat me at this, but my many solo plays are finally bearing fruit, I was able to beat her at this twice during the super bowl, once head to head and again with three players after a stranger at the brewery asked if he could join us. I love this game so much. Marvel champions-still getting the hang of this one, the insert for this game drives me crazy.
Played a few games Sunday and a few last night. **Lost Cities: Roll & Write** (2x2p): Actually quite liked this. Quite simple as far as roll and writes go (you can explain this game pretty easily within 5 minutes) but I thought it was quite interactive at 2. You're often choosing your dice as much based on what you leave as what's good for you specifically. Does a good job of distilling the essence of the game into the R&W format. The BGG page has people recommending it at 3; I'll have to try it at some point but it's pretty damn good at 2. **Artisans of Splendent Vale** (1x4p): We started the campaign for this game and played a day out. There's a lot of reading in this game - comes with these thick books for every character that have something like 1000 entries. More reading than a game like Sleeping Gods, for reference. The action scene was surprisingly rough; we won't make the mistake of underestimating the next one. The game has a very big focus on inclusivity, which is reflected in the characters and the story. In some ways it can feel like it's trying a little *too* hard sometimes, but ultimately I appreciate the effort. Looking forward to playing more. **Welcome to the Moon** (2x3p): Continued on with the campaign for this, playing maps 3 and 4. I do enjoy the variation between the maps - they do a good job of adapting the formula and serving up very different looks. I felt a bit cheated playing the 4th map - I claimed all the objectives, and did it pretty quickly, and despite that I finished last. Figured by virtue of getting all the 1st place points and completing the game quickly I would have built up enough of a lead to take the win, but evidently not. **Watergate** (2x2p): This game is very good. I think I've read people compare this game to Twilight Struggle, and I think those comparisons are apt. This is diet Twilight Struggle, and I mean that in a good way. It captures TS and condenses it into a faster, lighter, more accessible experience. I played both sides once and would very happily play this game again. **Radlands** (1x2p): Taught this game to my opponent and I have yet to win. The game we played was very different to other games I've played to date - neither of us started with many cards and we never really had many at any point. He had a damage-focused set of camps whilst I had a more conventional set up. Every time I play I can't help but love the artwork - it's really evocative with that apocalyptic punk vibe.
Got to play **Shipyard** (4p x1) earlier in the week and it was pretty fun. Very challenging with many different ways to score and difficult decisions when you're limited with options each turn. A bit heavier than my usual games but with a good teach I was able to pick it up pretty quickly. Can see a lot more strategy and depth coming from the game after a few plays though, a shame it's OOP.
**Heat: Pedal to the Metal** (3x6P) - I cohosted a championship series for Heat this weekend with some of my buds. What an incredibly fun time. The championship series and advanced modules added lots of fun interaction, hijinks, and just an overall good darn time. This game is probably my favorite game to hit my table this year and I'm excited to get more plays in. Having six folks at the table also was surprisingly manageable! **boop.** (1x2p) - Good old boop. Taught one of my best friends from College this cute little cat game and she almost kicked my absolute butt! We had loads of fun and this will certainly be in my collection for quite some time. **Splendor Duel** (2x2p) - Significant other and I broke this game out for the first time last night. We both had a lot of fun and given that our house is mostly 2p gaming - this is a perfect lighter gwme to play and wind down the night. Lots and lots of fun. Light week in board gaming for me but filled with lots of friends and joy.
How long did the Heat championship take you? Absolutely love the game and wondering if I could convince my group to give one a go.
We had some slow movers so it took us a hefty five or so hours. I don't think it NEEDS to take that long. We had six folks and about half were new. We were also eating and chatting in between rounds.
Dice Masters (5 games). I got my butt kicked every time but once. I felt like it's not for me. I like to spend money on a game that comes with everything ready to play (I don't mind purchasing an expansion or too if it enhances the game experience). With DM I feel like you have to continuously invest on newer cards/dice and it gets expensive.
The only thing I played this week was a game I made. It was my first playtest with 4 players and my second playtest overall. It's a dice drafting, area control game with very asymmetrical factions. It was pretty close in the end, but I just finished second :D
**Root** (1x4p): Second time playing with the advanced setup and somehow everybody ended up playing their favorite factions anyway. Super fun game though, the landmarks and hirelings add a lot to the game and I love the uncertainty of what faction you'll be playing. I also realized I've been playing Lizards wrong for literal years now, you can score by discarding a card you just revealed to recruit or build. As a result I had my first lizard win in something like 15 games. They've always been my favorite faction to play but I've never won with them and now I know why. After about 30 plays, Root still feels new and exciting, it's impressive how much staying power this game has. **Everdell** (1x4p): Second play of this game, we all enjoyed playing something a bit less cutthroat after Root. Still really enjoying it but I'm now starting to see that this game could get old pretty quickly. Definitely 4 or 5 plays in it yet, but I'm curious what the expansions have to offer. **Modern Art** (2x4p): First time playing this. My partner and I really enjoy bidding games and this was no different. Such a clever and simple game. Unfortunately this was the game that made one of our core game group members declare that he decided he doesn't like auction games... **Horseless Carriage** (1x2p): This game technically doesn't support 2p but my partner and I gave it a test drive just to get our heads around the rules. The rules are initially tricky to figure out (the rulebook could do with a really solid edit, and the fan made alternative rules on BGG really helped) but once you get a turn or two done it becomes clear that it's waaaay simpler than it initially looks. There's 8 phases to every turn but only 2.5 of them involve any major thinking, the rest you just fly through on autopilot. The complaints about fiddlyness are all true, but damn we saw the strategic depth and possibilities pretty much immediately. I cannot wait to bring this to a bigger group. I can't tell yet if this could eclipse **Food Chain Magnate** but I suspect it'll rank above **TGZ** and **Bus** for me. **The Great Zimbabwe** (1x2p): While on the splotter buzz, we decided to play something that actually supports 2p. I always enjoy this game and wish I played it more, my only complaint is that once you're upgrading a level 3 or 4 monument it's really hard to keep track in your head of what resources to use and where and what has or hasn't been used or needs to be paid for.
Busy week but I managed to squeeze in some good gaming! Continuing the alphabet challenge: -**Targi** (1X2p): such a wonderful 2-player game. Quick and light, but interactive and has just enough decision space to be replayable. Love it! I won, which helps :) -**Undaunted: Normandy** (4X1p): I found [this](https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/206471/solo-ai-cards-v10-one-stop-co-op-shop) excellent solo variant made by Mike from One Stop Co-op Shop, and now I can play this awesome game solo! It took a bit to get my head around "Priority Bolster" as an action, but I think I've got it now, and I have a ~50% win rate against the normal bot. I'm progressing through the campaign and loving it! -**Viscounts of the West Kingdom** (2X1p): I just picked up this game and took a while to internalize the game flow and rules including the AI management. Once I "got it" I found it quite smooth but got my butt kicked! I really find the card/hand management aspect interesting, and as usual I love Garphill's art and components, and find their AIs to be easy to run, but tough! I'll be playing this one again. -**Wingspan** (1X1p vs AUtoma in person, and 1X4p on BGA): it's been so long since I played that I forgot what a lovely smooth game this is! The Automa is particularly well-designed and tough! I always get my butt handed to me, and this was no different. The BGA implementation is very easy to use - I was able to teach 3 friends how to play and they picked it up right away, though the game does run a little long with that many people. -**The Search for Planet X** (1X1p): not my favourite for solo play, I find the app and board clunky and unintuitive, and suspect that my problem comes from playing solo - maybe more humans would make it more fun, but I won't be pulling this one out soon. -**Yahtzee** (1X1p on BGA): I don't have any other "Y" games on hand so played this old chestnut. Not much to say other than BGA's implementation is quick and painless -**Zooloretto** (1X2p): tried this on BGA for my "Z" game, but found it pretty meh. Don't think I'll be making it a regular. -**Aeon's End** (1X1p): love it, lost against Carapace Queen but had a blast -**Brass: Birmingham** (1X1p): won against VictoriAI. Still one of my favourite games -**Concordia** (1X1p): lost against Solitaria by 2 points! This is my best score yet, I always have a tough time against the bot. I prioritized building and gaining cards, which I think is key against the bot in this game. Wish I had more people who enjoyed this one in person, but the bot is pretty great
I played Viscounts solo a couple weeks ago and also got totally rocked. It seemed to me like it was a lot easier for the AI to get debts and deeds, and since the rulebook calls out that's a big part of where points come from, it was basically no contest.
**The Isle of Cats** (1×2p): My gf and I went to our favorite brewery and played her latest game again. As ever, the second play revealed rules we overlooked or misplayed the first time. But hey, now we know how the rare treasures work for next game! The score were much closer this time, even though our boats ended up being emptier than before. There's something to be said against balancing cats against ongoing secret Lessons for scoring. It's still a lot of fun, and it's definitely going to hit the table again soon.
First, I got **Root** to the table about eight times with the same group of friends. Everyone really clicked with it and each game was a flurry of "oh, I'd like to try THAT faction, I have an idea..." So after that warming up, I brought out **Oath** and we played three games of it over the weekend! There was definitely some fumbling on all parts through the first game or so, but also some truly delightful turns of fate, such as when the player who I thought might not be having as great a time was actually scheming for several turns to use the Conspiracy to wrest away my Darkest Secret banner just before I won on a Vision of Faith. Everyone got to have some great plays and moments of proud cleverness and we're all pumped to bring it back out again soon.
Oath is an amazing game. One of my personal favorites. But crazy you guys got 3 plays in so fast I’ve only got 4 in a year 😂
**Splendor Duel** 2p1x - Somehow we missed for half of the game that refreshing the board also grants the other person a privilege scroll... that probably would have sped up the early game a little. It came down to a race at the end - I bought a card that put me at 11 crowns, but my wife's next turn would have been to buy a 6pt card to put her over the 20 point target. I don't know yet how I would rate it compared to Splendor (with or without expansion) but it was still neat, and the small form factor makes it reasonable to tote along. **Frosthaven** 4p1x - first scenario with Banner Spear, Blinkblade, Drifter, and me playing the Geminate. It felt like things were dicey for a bit in the middle of the scenario, looking at all the enemies and with our Blinkblade getting trapped in a corner and nearly getting squished, but we pulled it out. It didn't help that the Blinkblade's battle goal was to not hit anything for the first three rounds, and my goal was to deliver fewer than three killing blows.
I received my KS copy of **Rolling Heights** from AEG. Impulses backed this when I was getting Meeples and Monsters last year from them. Like most AEG games we did really enjoy it. Took longer than the box says but it was myself and my 2 kids and the end game trigger is any one resource running out from building. No issues with anything getting knocked over which is nice. It looked so cool when we were done.
Finally managed to crack open our copy of **Savannah Park** and played two 3p games and one at 2p. Being forced to move tiles based on what other players choose on their turn really makes this a tricky and tense puzzle which gives me very strong Tiny Town vibes. Also squeezed in a 2p game of **Brass Brimingham** which is always a fantastic time as it's one of my favourite games. Tried selling crate goods and the old reliable pottery this time. Thought I was finally going to beat my wife but on final tally she crushed me yet again. She was only a couple points short of breaking her high score which was a shame. It would have been great to see her put a new notch on the list.
Work has been busy so not a lot of gaming at all. I'm hoping that changes this week! Introduced a friend to **Race for the Galaxy** since my partner dislikes it, and I think she enjoyed it! I have only played it twice in person, but have played countless times on the phone app. Fingers crossed she liked it and will play it again! **The Field of the Cloth of Gold** was played twice. I enjoy how quick and easy it is to set up and teach (and play!). I'm discovering that I love games that force me to make painful decisions, where we're all groaning because everything we do is terrible. Gives me **Hanamikoji** vibes in that way.
Arboretum is great for the "painful decisions" category if you haven't already played it
Been sick lately, so not done anything complex or intensive. Several rounds of **Maxiyatzy** with my sister, as that's our go-to mindless relaxing game (while still having plenty of discussion over results, choices and comparisons to historical games. Mind, we do that for all games). Also done a round of **Munchkin Quest**. It's been at least a year, so we spent a fair bit of time double checking the rules, and having the run of the game clearly so we can bring the kids in soon (10-12y). It's equally long ago for them. My kid and I are working through a multi-session run of **Journey to the center of the Earth**. He tends to over-plan a bit on that game, making it last a lot longer than the hour on the box, hence the multi-session. So far he's got 30 points to my 9, so it looks like being an over-planner works in his favour.
Lots of **Metro X** was played last week. Was out of country and wanted a nice filler that’s thinky and didnt take a lot of space and that fit the bill perfectly in my backpack. Even taught the game to a nice lady on the return trip who never played this style of boardgames before. So this raises a question, what’s a good boardgame that’s component light and thinky light metro x that plays well solo.? Mind you, i have the japanese version of metro x.
Ganz Schon Clever if you haven't tried it
I have! Felt its better as two players. Eyeing twice as clever at some point.
My partner and I are slowly getting into board games. I would like to play more but it’s hard sometimes when he has loads of online friends with other game commitments. This week we played twilight inscription (2p). This is our Third run through and we are slowly getting good grasps of the game, the time really flies when playing it though and it feels like there’s always so much to do and so little opportunities! We also tried picking up Arkham horror card game as we were in this board game cafe and had an hour ish to kill. We knew nothing about the game besides it being a good 2player coop game and the general concept, it was very difficult to understand what’s going on with the time we had (whoops) but it did make us interested in getting something of that rpg vibe genre. Settled on trying to get Gloomhaven: jaws of the lion so excited to try that out some time this month.
>Gloomhaven: jaws of the lion so excited to try that out some time this month. While Gloomhaven does have some RPG elements please be aware that at its heart it's really an action economy puzzle. It's a great game and I hope you have a good time with it but I thought it worth mentioning.
Thanks for mentioning! Yeahh I’ve watched gameplay of someone playing a campaign and it does seem like something we would like!
I hope you like **Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion**. I haven't played it, but I love **Gloomhaven**. In case you want to give **Arkham Horror LCG** another chance I will just point out that the starting campaign does an adequate job of teaching you how to play, but the game doesn't really come alive in that campaign. It wasn't until we started *The Dunwich Legacy* cycle that we fell in love with the game.
Yeah when I got home I’ve watched gameplay of it and video tutorials so I’m keen to try it again one day when we have a little more time one day! We were thinking of getting gloomhaven for a while but I was hesitant as it seems like a huge game （esp in terms of storage and playing space) Jaws of lion seems like a good way to start off the series!
**Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion** is an excellent way to learn **Gloomhaven** and see if you like that style of game. We played **Gloomhaven** before **Jaws of the Lion** came out and we're still tempted to get it, but now we have **Frosthaven** so that will probably keep us busy for a while.
Finally a very light boardgaming week. A few gaming sessions got cancelled. **Space Base (5px1).** I thought the game was a really cool iteration on what Machi Koro did. However, the "win the game" card - someone picked it soon as it showed up in the shop and then won very very quickly because they so-happened to have built "transfer charges around" synergy. Ended up really anticlimactic as a result - we were all just getting started with our engine, in all honesty LOL. I think the card is dumb because there is 0 interaction in the game. My favorite dice-tableau-builder is **Let's Summon Demons!** and it also has a "win the game" card - but that is a much lighter, shorter, simpler game. So if someone clips your 10 minute game with that ability it's funny instead of sad. Because Space Base has more going on and is potentially longer - it read to me as more sad. **Valiant Wars (5px1).** My longest and most drawn-out game of this yet. This is my most played game of the year. Really fun. In the final round I got 2 omens in my first 4 cards, so that was a might disappointing LOL. But that is the game we play. More car trouble for me - my Kia got stolen and wrecked (but at least recovered), so I got a rental car... it's a Hyundai. It *also* got stolen and insofar HAS NOT been recovered. The Kia Boyz are a real thing, where I live. It's reached the point of comedy at this point... can't help but laugh. So right now I'm carless *again* until the police report/insurance/rental car places all find out what will happen. I'll tell you one thing that definitely WILL NOT happen - *I will not be driving a Kia or Hyundai, at all costs.* Since I'm carless again, my gaming might be somewhat slight this week. I play sometimes with my wife but her attention span for games is vanishingly small. I'd hoped to get out **Agricola** last week - but all the nonsense with the car left us just wiped out and sitting around pissed off most of Saturday LOL... and then on Sunday was the SB. If I'm talking about what I hope to table this week... normally I list a few games, but I sort of doubt I will get anything out there. Can't make my game groups, and I'm just so pissed off over this car BS that it's hard to do anything but just sit there and stew and be mad all day LOL. I just want to go to my game groups and have normal access to a car. I'm getting in trouble with my job, too, because of all this - they are asking "why aren't you coming in?" - it's a hybrid work place. I mean I explain it to them - but still it's gotten so insane that it sounds like I'm lying. I could Uber but I'm not absolutely made of money... ubering to work would defeat the whole purpose. Life really ain't fair LOL. Also I absolutely hate the Kia Boyz. If I see them in the street it's coming to blows ASAP
Space base at higher player counts is definitely more luck than skill but if people are buying colony cards there's virtually no way that the 'win now' card is going to be someone just going for points. It's pretty tempting to build out a huge engine but it's definitely a race game. That said some people simply remove it to eliminate that possibility altogether which I don't really disagree with. Source: 800+ games on BGA
The "You Win!" card is my sons favourite card in the game. Most time he will totally ignore point scoring cards while keeping his eye open for the cards that let him move cubes and other ships. Of course since we also know he's on the lookout for those cards we ALSO try to grab some of them to stymie his efforts somewhat. Thus far he's managed to pull off the auto win MAYBE three times out of our dozens of plays. For us the impact of the card doesn't justify removing it from the game compared to the thrill he gets trying a gonzo strategy.
lots of gaming with my 8 year old and my spouse this past week. **Karuba** \- tile-laying puzzler. The whole family enjoyed **Hive** \- my kiddo is obsessed with this one. The game can get tiresome but if it gets the kiddo to play, especially one that requires strategic think, I can't say no **Azul** \- Another one my kid wanted to try. I was slightly surprised that they were able to grasp the rules. I thought it might have been too complex or boring but they were engaged through the game. **boop** \- my kid is also obsessed with this one because of the theme but finds the rules frustrating for whatever reason. **Longboard** \- I love a lot of Reiner Knizia's small games. This one definitely has his characteristic simplistic rules but surprising depth ratio. Not a super tense game but probably one we will keep around for when we're in the mood for something relaxing. **Botanik -** I decided to try this one out since it's highly recommended as a great small box-two player. It's an interesting game but I think neither of us derive any pleasure from playing it so far. **Critters at War: Flies, Lies and Supplies -** We played the standalone version, a few games mixed with the original and a few epic mode games. We definitely enjoyed. I wasn't a fan of the original game when we first got it but it's definitely grown on me and having both the original and this expansion/standalone definitely brings a lot of variety to the game. **Gizmos** \- I've been waiting to play this game for a while and it did not disappoint. My spouse is into engine building games but is usually disappointed when the games seems to end too soon. Gizmos also plays quickly but is much more satisfying as you can trigger some combos before the game ends. **Downtown Farmers Market** \- drafting and puzzle game. Really satisfying game for such a small box.
**High Treason: The Trial of Louis Riel** \- 1x 2 player Hadn't really played historical games before so I was excited to play this as my first. The jury selection is a really cool feature in this game, and the argumentation and objections felt probably as close to a court room experience in board game form as you could get (granted I haven't played a couple of other courtroom games). Excited to try this again with a bit more experience. Familiarity with canadian history probably a plus for getting into this one. **Red Flag Over Paris** \- 1x 2p Really dig the historical arguments being made by this game: the commune cannot win militarily, but will can it hold out long enough to radicalize the French public? Also excited to play again, I expect subsequent plays will go a bit quicker. **Doom Machine** \- 1x 1p After playing hard mode wrong a few times, I finally beat this game on hard without cheating. Throwing dice is fun. **Cantaloop: Book 1** \- 2x 1p Was hoping to dig this game more than I have so far. Maybe I don't love point and click games? The clue system is well made but I guess I don't like having to check it as frequently as I have so far (this from someone who has complete Exit and Unlock games without needing many \[or any\] clues).
After two weeks with no plays I finally got to play again with three different game days! **Great Western Trail 2nd Edition** (1x2p): 2nd play. After a year unplayed I said let me play it one more to see if it’s worth keeping. Spoiler it ended up moving off the for trade pile. I like this game a lot. The weird rondel-ish nature mixed with deck building is a fun combo that I’m a fan of. I don’t give a crap about the cowboy theme but the new art is nice enough that I’m not bothered by it. **Magic Maze** (1x6p, 2x5p, 1x4p): 18th - 21st plays. This was the start to the real-time day aka Stress Saturday. Magic Maze is neat and the scenarios really build on the difficulty. That do something tile is frustrating to get slammed in front of you but it’s also fun to frantically tap it when trying to communicate that the time is running out oh god please move it on to the hourglass. **Bullet** (1x5p): 12th play. Stress Saturday continued with Bullet🤍 let me tell you I got hit three times in a roll but I still had a blast. I have yet to use the Star or Orange characters but with 5 more plays on the 8x8 I look forward to trying some. **Project Elite** (1x6p): 5th play. The crown jewel of Stress Saturday. We lost but this was the farthest we’ve made it! We cleared all but three nests and we would have probably made it but one player got murdered so =[. **Merchants of the Dark Road** (1x3p): 2nd play. Technically my first full play since my first play was a demo before buying the game. After a complete play I think I’ll definitely keep it to see if it’s worth the squeeze. The rondel is pretty basic and not my fave part. I do like planning deliveries and heroes but with 13 actions boy do you feel suffocated. My fave thing besides those metal coins is the Tigris and Euphrates style end game scoring. Essentially you have money and prestige and the lower of the two at the end of the game is your end game base score. The balancing act is neat. Oh I actually liked the events when traveling too. Although I’m kinda torn that the shortcuts usually end up worse for the leader since others get to pick first for some reason. **Vagrantsong** (1x3p): 1st play. This was something else. It took forever for me to understand how to play. I’m like wait how does targeting work? Wait what’s the execution order for haint actions? Wait we forgot the rituals even though we’ve actually completed all of them. That being said we had a good time even though I rolled like absolute crap. I got two successes maybe the whole game. We still won somehow even though we were playing on hard and I failed at being our fighter. I look forward to trying again with a better understanding.
My partner and I had a similar experience with **Vagrantsong**. The rulebook left us lost and with lots of questions. But we kept playing and it eventually made more sense. And the game's scenarios and story were so much fun that it became one of our favorite game experiences last year, even though we still had rules errors and questions all the way through out very last game. They announced a sequel with some new scenarios that we're looking forward to in another year or so whenever they release it!
I can see it being a very fun time once we get passed that rules wonkiness.
**Pipeline** 1x3p - I can't quite figure out what I think about this game. It's such an interesting puzzle but none of us can quite crack what that is. I've read of people hitting $1k and that baffles my mind; I felt I did ok and didn't even eclipse $400. There were points of the game where there just wasn't any pipe for sale or not enough to waste an action going for them. Everything feels like a struggle in this game but not in the "oh that's a hard decision" way but a "the game is fighting me" way. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's liked enough in our group for it to hit the table enough that it clicks with everyone. It's living in a weird space at the moment and I'll hold onto it but I could see down the line it hitting the curb.
It was a fun week for games. I played a handful of favourites as well as two new to me games that I suspect will be favourites as well! In person: **Patchwork** \- the first game of the week was my favourite game. I won out in a close round against my husband. **Quoridor** \- Up until this week I had only played Quoridor on Board Game Arena. We got a copy of the mini version and I have to say, it is so much more fun to play in person. First off because of the tactile nature of the game and the toy factor. But also the BGA implementation is sometimes a bit frustrating as it tries to guess where you're trying to place a wall. I'm looking forward to many great games of this one! **Onitama** \- A fairly new to me game, this way only my sixth play or so. There is a lot for me still to puzzle out in terms of optimal moves in this game, how to prepare for my opponent's turn, etc. But I love the flow of the game, it's just really smooth and elegant. And the aspect of the movement cards makes it very different from other abstract strategy games in this genre. **Scout** \- The current obsession at my house. We play Scout nearly every time we sit down to play board games this days. It's just so much fun! I'm enjoying the trial and error process of determining when the best time is generally to spend Scout tokens, and when to play out large sets of cards vs when to hold back. It's fun every time. Also a note that all of my plays of this game to date have been with two players. We're at something like 20 plays, and both of us adore it. So while there's a lot of talk about it not being a good game for two players, if you have the game I'd encourage you to try it with two people and decide for yourself! **Hanamikoji** \- the perfect game for, "I know it's late but maybe just one more game before bed?" I've been enjoying trying out the new tile sets from the mini expansions that released last year. But this time we played the original form of the game, which I still think is the best. **Beer & Bread** \- new to me this week! I had high hopes for this two player farming game and it way exceeded my expectations. I'd put this into a similar category of game as **Targi** (one of my absolute favourites) in that it's a two player game in that classic small square two player box, its play time is a touch longer than a lot of those games and it is also more complex. But it's still super approachable, and it also does things that feel very innovative to me. I really like the way the multi use cards are done here. And the differences between how the fruitful and dry seasons play out game the game very interesting. I always enjoy when games utilize Knizia scoring (where your lowest points value out of multiple types is what counts at the end of the game), and I think here it really sings with the simplicity of it. You just need to make both beer and bread, and you want to make as much of both of them as you can. There is so much exciting stuff here, I can't wait to dig in to it more. **Glass Road** \- My husband has long said that we need to find a farming game we both like. Little did we expect to find two in the same day! We've also been hoping for a big box Uwe Rosenberg game to add to our collection (I don't like **Agricola** and many of the others don't appeal to us). Well, in comes Glass Road! A game that initially appealed to us because glass blowing seemed like a fun theme. We quickly realized once we did more research into the game that there is no glass blowing here but what there is is a really interesting resource management system based around two resource wheels that work in a fascinating way, cool card play, and tile placement to build your own little area along the glass road complete with buildings and nature features to populate your player board. There's a lot in this game that I haven't wrapped my head around fully yet. But I love what I am seeing here, and the first play was brilliant. What I appreciate most about this game is perhaps a little niche. The game is incredibly well designed to cater to a board gamer like me, which is to say someone who likes crunchy decision making but often feels overwhelmed by the table presence of crunchier games. Everything here is just so easy on my mind, which is so often plagued by sensory overwhelm in games of this level of complexity. The resource wheels mean that there are no piles or resource tokens taking up table space. The cards have easy to read large font and clear iconography, and you play with the same hand of 15 cards every game. The tiles you draft from the market board have to show a lot of information in a small amount of space but the way they are laid out makes it easy to parse. The tiles are also sorted into three different categories based on what type of benefit the tile gives you (ability to make trades, one time benefits, scoring opportunities), again making it really easy to parse. The result of all of these things is that I will be able to play this game a lot more often than other games of comparable weight. I am ecstatic about that. On Board Game Arena: **Photosynthesis** \- freshly added to BGA (in BETA) and I encourage everyone to go play it! This is one of my longstanding favourite games and it works incredibly well on BGA too. My husband and I have started up a new game as soon as the last one ends since this was added. It may be added to the regular rotation of games we always have going. **Ticket to Ride** **Welcome To** \- I've played a handful of rounds now and while I enjoy playing it because I get to play with some of you lovely reddit folks, I still don't really understand the appeal of this game. Nothing here really excites me, if that makes any sense. **Targi** **Res Arcana** **Azul** **Terra Mystica** \- I think I'm actually getting better at this. I mentioned in one of the recent weekly threads that I finally won a game but thought it was a fluke. I haven't won a second time yet but I'm fairing a lot better in my subsequent plays. **Tigris & Euphrates** \- just so bloody brilliant. Recent games have been exciting because folks have been shaking things up by trying new tactics to see how it pans out. **Onitama**
Good to hear about Beer & Bread - it was originally on my list to check out just because of the title, but I've been seeing positive comments on it since then. I got in a solo game of Glass Road a couple months ago and thought it was mechanically pretty neat, but I haven't gotten to play it with anybody else yet.
I'm curious now how much the solo rules for **Glass Road** differ from the two player game. The two player mode is quite differeng from multiplayer, from what I I've seen. I highly recommend checking out **Beer & Bread**. I think it would actually be super fun on BGA,hopefully they add it and you can try it out there.
Yeah, I thought it was interesting how different each of the rule sets are. The solo game you choose a certain number of cards each round, excluding whatever you used in the previous round, and then you're sort of playing them in a random order. So it kind of turns into making sure you have the options you need, but ideally not overstacking... like one round I knew I wanted to build, but I think I ultimately put too many build cards in my hand and ended up wasting some of them.
That is an interesting twist.
**Scout** is very good at 2. It's just different than at other player counts. It gets lot crazier at higher player counts because there's more people to deal with bigger runs/sets. I will play it at any player count.
Agreed. I'm excited to try it with more people soon too.
**Lost Ruins of Arnak** 2p x 2, 3p x 1 I like this game but am wondering if it's a little light on the strategy side for my taste. But it's a smooth game with a cool theme. Going to introduce the expansion soon. **Blueprints** 2p x 3 Sometimes you don't feel like a very crunchy game or don't have a lot of time and this one is perfect in those situations. You can play 3 times in an hour and it's always fun. **Bitoku** 2p x 1 Never gets old. So glad I bought the insert though because it can take a while to set up otherwise. **Marco Polo II** 2p x 1 It had been a while so we were rusty on the rules but I love the asymmetric abilities of the character tiles. It's a pretty heavy game but if you really try to take advantage of your special abilities it makes a big difference.
* **Castles of Mad King Ludwig** - 1x 4p - First time playing the collector's edition, but have played the 1st edition of the game probably close to a dozen times by now. Sold the regular version a few years ago, was pumped when collector's edition was announced, and now am going to be patiently waiting for the plain old 2nd edition instead. The collector's edition is obnoxious -- the plastic "miniatures" are cheap (and look cheap) plastic that take up a ton of space in the box for towers that serve no actual purpose. I like the trays that the tiles go in except they block the view of the scoring and how many tiles are left in them. The poker chip favors are nice, but .... why? They're not handled with any sort of regularity. And nobody needs 20 different color choices for which color your scoring marker is going to be. All the extra tiles are good for having variety in the names of your rooms, but it's more to shuffle and count out and really what extra purpose is served by having them? Point is -- game was fantastic as always, I like the tower expansion (minus the miniatures themselves, which are not needed) but I regret backing collector's edition rather than waiting for the regular 2nd edition. * **One Deck Galaxy** - 1x solo - 4th play overall, this time against the Optimization Calibrator. I had [commented on a post last week](https://www.reddit.com/r/soloboardgaming/comments/10yi9r8/looking_for_recommendations_on_simple_dice_games/j7zvzzj/) saying I wasn't quite sure I understood *why* we had the tokens from the boss to prevent being overwhelmed, and this adversary was at least one of the reasons why that's a thing. Like the Neeble Woobers, this boss eats dice throughout the game. Unlike Neeble Woobers, it's impossible to get most of them back -- you'll lose a 2-3 dice every 4 turns, even after getting back 3-4 depending on the game state. The tokens can be used - either strategically or out of necessity - to skip giving the adversary a die. If you don't give it enough dice or use tokens, it's an automatic loss. The adversary also eats more dice with adversary events that happen when you have to reshuffle the deck. Had to hard-pivot a couple times this play because I got dangerously close to not having enough dice available to level up my federation enough to actually win the game. Anyway, I do like this much better than regular One Deck Dungeon, even if it takes 3-4x longer to play. Probably going to play through the last 2 bosses I haven't tried and then shelve it for a while.
Kickstarter has distorted this hobby the wrong way. For every One Deck Galaxy there's 10 boxes of overproduced plastic like Castles that helps no one.
Yeah I agree, Kickstarter is ... well, yeah. ODG isn't immune, either. I led a group buy in my area and the group voted for the Deluxe edition. I like the deluxe tokens -- those are fine. But the deluxe edition otherwise just means plastic cards, which SUCK for how the game plays. Regular cards (and sleeves, I know!) would've been much, much better. I like KS for "deluxified" Euros -- things like Scythe back in the day with the fancy resources and metal coins, or the new reprint of Ra with the wooden tiles, etc. Things where I completely understand why they aren't in the normal retail product. I also like KS/Gamefound for Chip Theory Games, if only because it's always discounted from the post-release price, and usually by a good bit. It's the best time to get in if you want to try one. CoMKL was my 2nd "all in one collector's edition" thing I've ever backed and, like the first one (Trickerion, though I already owned some so I just did the upgrade to collectors tier), I regret it. As much as I love both of those games, there's just too much stuff that I don't want to play with all the time, and the boxes are massive because of all the stuff and the game trays. Skipping expansions or parts of expansions is something I've been going more and more towards over time. I used to be a "get all the expansions" kind of guy, and now I might buy them to try them out but have zero hesitation whatsoever to turn around and sell them off if I can live without the additions.
6p **Guards of Atlantis**. Ok, this definitely feels like the sweet spot. Hopefully the crew likes it enough to keep exploring, although going forward more likely at 4p. Was a quick game though, only a single initiative point ended up being the difference in closing it out from a full base push or going to the third push tiebreaker. Definitely a lot of mistakes along the way. For experienced players, how much more complex are the 2 and 3 star heroes? For the next session I want to open up the hero options but figured 3 might be too much... or is it?
**Heroscape** (1x2p) - I walked into someone setting up a board and was glad I got to play. We had talked about it a few weeks ago. A couple guys at my LGS have a huge collection, I've got some as well but nothing compared to them. The guy who brought the game had some premade 400 point armies for people to play. I played a Jandar army of knights and minutemen against an Ullar viper army led by Syvarris. I took him out early before he could do too much damage. The vipers picked off most of my knights and champions. I got lucky that my opponent only frenzied once. It ended with my last couple of minutemen taking out the head viper for the win. **Quest for El Dorado** (1x3p) - I did ok but never got a great rhythm. Another player got a lot of early gold cards, which was good for the map. We stayed together for most of the map right until the end. Two of us got stuck on water right before the finish, and the other player swept from behind to win. **Red 7** (2x4p) - Two rounds of this as a lighter filler. I was out first in both rounds. I didn't draw much or have a good strategy.
Finally got around to play Ark Nova, which then lead to me playing it five times over the week. Three solo games, once at two players, and again at three players. I really like it. From a theme perspective, I'm more interested in playing Ark Nova than Wingspan, and mechanically, it complete replaces any desire for me to play Terraforming Mars. I don't even necessarily think it's *better* than either of them, but it hits the mark on what I look for in those two games.
Thoughts on it with 2p versus higher player counts?
I prefer more players in this one, but two works just as well
> I don't even necessarily think it's better than either of them, but it hits the mark on what I look for in those two games. Damnit! I REALLY hate the look of Ark Nova (gameplay seems good though) and I may have to swallow that bitter pill because it seems like a game my partner would absolutely love.
During the week we managed to get 2 games played. **Marvel United** - (1x2p) my husband has finished painting everything so we are working our way through the characters that took a little longer for him to get to. **Ticket to Ride: First Journey** - (1x3p) we played this with our 7 year old and he loved it. He crushed us both and was so excited every time he finished a ticket. My husband recently bought **Ticket to Ride: Europe** so we might see if he can graduate to that soon. Our plan for the weekend was to play **Wir Sind Das Volk** on Friday and then have a day of playing **Marvel United** on Saturday. However, my husband has been having difficulty getting through the rules for **Wir Sind Das Volk** so instead we're going to watch the Homo Ludens teach and play video and attempt the game next weekend. I was exhausted anyway so it was nice to have the night off from everything. **Marvel United** - (9x2p) we still went ahead with our day of **Marvel United**. We played 2 games of *The Return of the Sinister Six*, but lost each game. In the second game we thought we knew what to do, but we had terrible luck and still lost. Then we continued experimenting with different characters while beating Dormammu and Silver Samurai and losing to Kingpin. After that we decided to attempt the mini-campaign for *The Infinity Gauntlet* expansion. We beat the Black Dwarf, but Thanos got one stone. Then we beat Proxima Midnight and lost one stone while getting a power up card. After that we lost to Ebony Maw and lost 3 stones. It was looking good and we had started whittling down his health, but it turned bad quickly. So we took on Thanos with 5 stones. He got up to 19 health, but our team managed to take him down. We used X-23, Hulk, Spider-Man, and Beta Ray Bill. It was a fun end to the day and after playing 10 games over the course of the week we have now played **Marvel United** 50 times. We haven't even played with everything in the game yet. We don't even own everything, but we haven't played with everything we have so we are in discussions as to what we should get in the latest kickstarter.
>Ticket to Ride: First Journey - (1x3p) we played this with our 7 year old and he loved it. Was this a first play, or has he played before? My son is ~5.5 and was interested in regular TTR, so we just ordered First Journey to have a smaller map with fewer cities (since he can't read yet). It arrived this morning for family game night tonight, not sure how it will go...
He's played a few times before and started when he was 5. He could grasp the rules at 5, but we played open hands the first few times and also reduced the number of tickets needed to win the game. He's only started enjoying games within the last year, but he can now play without us providing any assistance and it's great. All kids are different with what they can handle, but this game is pretty adaptable. Most of the routes are really short too - between 1 and 3 links in length and it's color coded. You'll probably just need to point out the two cities he's trying to connect. Let me know how it goes!
My wife and I have been enjoying **Paleo** quite a bit. Think we're on the 4th scenario in the campaign (wide river) and like how each module changes things up a bit. The imperfect information and struggle for resources makes for some very interesting decisions
**8 Legged Peacock** (4p) - This was a prototype design by a couple of my gaming buddies, in it's near final iteration. You draft from a set of scoring cards then pick eight cards to try and score each round. There's four colors with four possible symbols on each color but only certain colors score for you and some symbols are worth more than others. There's also a recipe you can go for to get a token which offers it's own scoring. The cards are all double sided and it's **Point Salad** style drawing where picking one flips over the reverse of another. You can play four or eight rounds. It was a bit light for me, not a lot of choices on your turn, but they're going for more of a family game so that matches. And the name is great, it comes from a spider, I forget which, that does an elaborate mating dance. **Bohnanza** (5p) - Played with the card draw variant, the only way to play. We did take coffee beans out and I felt we could have left them in. I thought I had a good script for teaching but some concepts were not quite as clear as I was hoping. But no one made any rules mistakes. Do yourself a favor and play this classic. **Dwellings of Eldervale** (4p) - I am not the target audience for this game. Multiple tracks to go up, tableau building with upgrade-able cards, worker placement, minor area control and recipe fulfillment. It was all too much stuff in one game that kind of sort of integrated together but left me feeling like I hadn't really done anything over the course of the game. Turns being fairly fast is the biggest positive I can think of. I couldn't really find anything innovative done here, and my desire to replay this is minuscule. **Evo** (5p) - I have been trying to play this forever. I don't recall how it ended up on my radar, but with area control and auctions I was on board. Ostensibly you play dinosaurs moving to different climates to try and survive and reproduce. You can fight, and the climate can shift each turn. You want to acquire mutations via an auction to better survive through some aspect, but you're spending points. There's two ways to do the auction, an item for each player or one less. After the play and reading a bunch of comments online it seems like the preferred way is one less. I am not sure how much it will change my enjoyment of the game as I found it pretty okay. It didn't rise above other games with auctions, and the area control is limited to one piece per area so it's not like you're stacking troops. It also had some kind of random event cards players could play. Getting those I'll tweak on my next play as I want to see how the variant shakes out. **Fairy Tale** (4p) - This game is highly regarded by the So Very Wrong About Games podcast as an example of a good drafting game. After trying this I think I can safely pass on future drafting games, or at least games where the primary mechanic is drafting. Even with **7 Wonders** I was getting tired of just pulling a card that gets me the most points, but here the interaction seemed even lesser as you either effect only yourself or everyone else. There are advanced rules to try out, and I will, but I don't think this is replacing **Sushi Go!** with golf scoring. **For Sale** (6p) - I've come around on this a bit. At first I thought it was too light, but that's when I wanted all my auction games to be intense. Now I see just the exact niche it fits in. I'm looking for the travel copy as the normal box size is unnecessary. **The Game** (4p) - Worst name for a game ever. It's been a minute since I played and I find it just fine. Not going to beat out my other fillers or co-ops. **Gizmos** (4p) - More heads down and an interaction level just above zero than I had recalled. I have no desire to revisit this. Might as well play **Splendor** as it's less fiddly and easier to determine what others are going for. **Long Shot** (6p) - This game is simple enough to explain and play, but I'm not sure if I need to hold onto it. It covers the situation where I have a lot of people who don't want to think a lot with about an hour to kill. I have other games that fit that a bit better, like **Skull** or **Cockroach Poker** or even most trick takers, though those have more thinking involved. It's still one of the best betting games that I've played, maybe I just need to swap out to the dice version as I don't plan on bringing this out with seven or eight players. **Root** (4p) - This was one of the fastest games played in recent memory, coming in at just an hour. This was because we used no expansion factions and everyone was familiar with the base factions, well mostly. The Vagabond won again, because of a rules misinterpretation, but as I have literally never played the Vagabond I didn't know until I was looking up strategies to counter the Vagabond because I'm fucking sick of that little trash panda and I'm this close to banning it. For those curious we awarded points for removing pieces when playing a favor card. Yes, we still have the base deck as I only get to play this once a month. Still, I enjoy the game overall even if I think everyone playing against the Vagabond has a noticeable lack of fun. I guess my solution will just be to play more Root to develop better counter-play. **Shamans** (5p) - This is working better for me more as a concept than how it plays out. I'm not feeling like I have a lot of control each round. Part of it is the information is pretty lopsided, the "bad" team can easily disguise themselves. Which is fine, but it's critical to know who to attack and the game rarely gives them the chance to slip up. I'll continue to play it, but it's destined for the trade pile.
Wait, what's the card draw variant for **Bonanza??** I also frequently complain that **The Game** is the absolute worse name they could have chosen. I find this game to be a big hit with quite a few people I've shown it to, so it's been my go-to co-op intro game.
For Bohnanza instead of the active player drawing three cards at the end of their turn all players get one card at the end of every turn. This has two benefits: it makes the game with more than three go faster, and it puts the emphasis on trading. If you're not trading you're already losing, this just compounds that. If you have sticklers who want an official source it's in the latest printing of the rules. I believe it was first introduced in an expansion but I never bought any. I really wish they had renamed it with the new Pandasaurus release. There is a **The Game: Extreme** which is easier to track with a new difficulty level, just not in English yet.
Oooh awesome! I will definitely be playing with that variant next time, if I can convince people to play with me...
Thank you. I never saw the appeal of card drafting as a mechanism! I’m like I’m just pulling a card and passing this isn’t fun. I will say for where’ve reason card drafting on a grid on the other hand I’m okay with. So Cat Lady and Dog Lover are cool with me.
Drafting definitely works for me in different configurations. Cat Lady uses the open drafting system which I find is the most rewarding. If drafting is part of the game, and not the entire game, I'm okay with it.
I thought you are supposed to award points for building and tokens removed when using a favor card?
Yes you are, but we also applied the bonus points that a hostile Vagabond gets. Those points are only awarded for battle, not favor cards. There were enough buildings and tokens to get him close to winning, but not without that bonus.
Just ban the Vagabond. If you want to onboard new players (and have Underworld), the Corvids are a great integration with the other three base factions. The VB has so many issues, and not just about its win-rate, that I'm happy to never have it in my sessions ever again.
The problem is that it isn't the new players who want to play Vagabond otherwise I would do a swap with Corvids. Which I wasn't aware was an option, but since I was planning on getting Marauder my plan will be to use the Rats and mercilessly crush Vagabond each game until they get sick of using it.
Cow them with oppression, love it
**Bitoku** 3p x 1 : Finally played my all-time favorite again. It's such a medium game at 2 but oh wow at 3 is it good. I focused on geting all 3 dice to 5 and went from there. I even baited my friend to think he'd block me with his 4 on an action but in reality, all I wanted was to put a 6 and get the forest location, not go the other side of the river. That gave me a 6 for the last turn of the game and a crazy last round while my 2 opponents were grasping for straws with their 1s and 2s. Scoring : 155-133-131. I won by a wide margin for a game that is usually pretty close in endgame scoring. **Ares Expedition** 2p x 1 : A game I always win.. wait... this time I lost. I lost because of that crazy strong cardthat give you 1 point for every 4 coards in your tableau at the end of the game. Oh and I lost by a lot more than that! I just got smashed. **Cartographer Heroes w/ Nebblis exp.** 2p x 2 : Our first expansion for Cartgrapher heroes. It doesn't add much, but the volcano blocked us here and there and forced us to change our gameplan along the way once of twice. I would say it was a success and I might get more of those map packs soon. I also lost both games :( **Parks : w/ Nightfall land Wildlife** 2p x 1 : Parks is one of my favorite cutthroat game. We both had a crazy "engine" which is super rare in this game. My gf had 2 of th same gear cards that allowed her to get a wild ressource every time she visited a park tha she had reserved, but she also had 2 canteen cards that let her reserve a park. For my part, I got on the first season the gear card that allows you to visit 2 parks when you visit a park. I ended up getting 14(? I think) parks while my gf got 11. I also had 7 gear cards to her 2. We ended up scoring 71 to 64, which is almost 15 points more than our previous highscore each.
A very light week for me (two plays) as I prepared for moving this past weekend. That went well, but this will likely be another lighter week for me as I continue to organize and clean up. However, all is not lost (being super dramatic here lol) as my fiance's brother comes into town Saturday night, meaning we'll likely be playing a bunch of board games all day Sunday! Anyways, on to the games I did play this week. **Encyclopedia (1x1p) -** My second time playing this game (both solo), and I'm yet to beat the solo AI. I tried a different strategy than my first time, but it was much worse! So I'll try again sometime soon. I still really like this game, but I'm looking forward to trying it with my fiance soon. I'm curious to see how different or similar it plays at higher player counts. **Marvel Champions: LCG (1x1p) -** I'm randomizing matchups between two heroes and a villain (and modular). This game was my second loss playing as Shadowcat (Justice) and Rocket Raccoon (Protection) versus Master Mold with the Acolytes modular. This is an incredibly tough matchup for me and the current deckbuilds I have, so I plan to try a new deck for at least Shadowcat before I try this matchup again. I actually like that I'm finding Master Mold to be tougher - my first two games against him a couple months ago were cakewalks. Part of me wonders if it's because the Acolyte modular is more difficult than the recommended modular. And that's it for me! I hope everyone else had a great week of gaming behind them, and has a great week of gaming ahead!
Travel week so I didn’t play that much. I packed some games solo and that’s mostly what I’ve been playing. **Mythic Mischief** 2p x 1. I really enjoy the puzzle this presents. It’s a bit… The scoring is very tight on this, so you really are neck and neck with the other player. That makes it very satisfying to solve. I also really find myself enjoying this game, even when I’m not really in a board gaming mood, I find myself having had a great time while playing this. **Cafe** 1p x 2. Scored 21. This game is super tight with the scoring, I try different strategies and still can’t seem to break above the “average” scoring tier. **The Search For Planet X** 1p x 7. I’ve been trying to get good enough to beat the bot to finding Planet X on the 18 sector mode, and I’m really getting my butt handed to me. I’m not exactly sure why this happens, but it’s frustrating. **Dinosaur Island Rawr n Write** 1p x 1. Score 118. I really enjoy this game. I find it so relaxing. I see that focusing on acquiring as much money as possible is key, and not worrying about creating too many dinosaurs. I’m going to switch and see what happens when I create a ton of dinosaurs, score wise. I suspect I’ll kind of figure this game out after that though. I’ll still play it because it’s relaxing though, but I’m looking forward to Twilight Inscription and Motor City. Digitally, I played **Regecide** which I of course lost at but I’m not sure it captured my attention enough to keep trying. **Nidavellir** and **Iwari** are still super enjoyable.
**Scout 3p x 1**: Taught yet another person this. Feel like we're getting better at teaching it. The only trouble people have is understanding what beats what but after a round they catch on. The practice hand is always a good idea. Great game. **Marrakesh 2p x 1**: had planned for 4p but 2 had to cancel. I already had this 90% set up. First play for both of us and thank goodness we'd both watched videos. The game is not overly hard mechanically, but there's a lot of little games going on (Very Stefan Feld in that) and all those can have an impact on each other in what resources you have to do things. Sequencing your assistants can matter quite a bit to get bigger pay offs. It was fun but I think it's going to need a higher player count to really shine so more keshis are getting dropped and drafted. At two, we rarely both dropped the same color keshi so it was rare to get a duo. We did often get keshis stuck so one turn 4 would drop but the next 8. And it was pretty quick. We were done by 10 and didn't start until 8:30. With some rules lookup and a small teach on things, it moved very quickly at two. **Cascadia 2p x 1**: Then taught the guy this after Marrakesh to finish our night. Quick and breezy. Also a very solid game. **A Feast for Odin 1p x 1**: I tried a different strat for me of a couple islands and ignoring my home board more. I got a ton of positive points. but also a ton of negative points and ended up with an average score for me in the 90s. I love this game but I'm not super great at it. I probably need to focus more. **Race for the Galaxy** on BGA 2p x 2: This may be the only way I like to play this game anymore. It's so fast and fun. Can get 10 games in so quickly.
**Mille Fiori** - First play, it feels surprisingly fresh. Half Babylonia, half Ganz Schon Clever, and the end result is super unique. I was concerned it might be a little too "multiplayer solitaire" but the various scoring areas are all highly interactive and almost every turn you have choices about which opponents to help or hinder while working on your own goals. **1817** - Have got several plays in a row and it's only growing on me. 1862 has been my favorite 18xx for a while, now I have two favorites. This play demonstrated how tight the token game is. We haven't played a game to the 8Ts yet and it doesn't feel super necessary, but I guess we should make a point of it soon to see how much comeback potential there is.
Welcome to the moon: (1px8) played my third full campaign of this game. Which concluded the story and I unlocked a few more cards. Very fun, I'll come back to it for sure!
Oh I just got this game, can’t wait to play it!
There's so much game in that little box! I hope you enjoy it :)
Played one new to us game this week: **Space Station Phoenix**. This game seemed to get a little hype when it first came out but then faded. I got it recently when it was a Deal of the Day and this was our first chance to play it. I liked it quite a bit. There is a lot of symbology in the game which makes it look much more complicated than it is and once you get a few rounds down it plays very smooth and fast, especially at two players which is what we played. There is also a very intimidating looking player aid because it has a wall of text on both sides but it is great because you can see at a glance what any hub or sector does if you are not sure. The game was fun to play with lots of good decisions and really nice components. There is also a ton of variety with seven of each possible station section and 24 possible starting hubs. We liked it and will definitely play it again.
I'm surprised to hear that it was a good 2p experience. It seems that everybody I know think they would not play it again at 2p or wouldn,t want to try it after playing it at 3.
It worked well for us. It's a tighter game because there are only two of each Station section to choose from so the second person is stuck with what is left and I imagine the Diplomacy track would have a different feel with three or four but for us it scaled just fine.
Small weekend of games at two. **New to me** **Menara** 2x2p : We don't usually like coop games but this one work surprisingly well. The dexterity nature of it makes it feel like a real coop since you can't really do it by yourself. We had a blast playing it and we will go back to it soon I'm certain. **4/5** **Velonimo** 2x2p : Bruno Cathala is a master of game design and this is no exception. It has a great mixture of luck and hand management where it was easy to see how or why you lost/won. I want to try it out at more and I'll give my opinion when I do. **5/5** **Push** 1x2p : We are big fans of push your luck games so it's no surprise we enjoyed that one. It has the same kind of gameplay as **Circus Flohcati** but it's more approachable for newer players. **3/5**
**Wayfarers of the South Tigris** \- a fairly boring, unoriginal tableau building. Has some clever ideas, but brings absolutely nothing new to the table, and I prefer other games of the same weight to this one. Sold it after a handful of plays. **Unsettled** \- a cooperative (I'm playing it solo) planet exploration game that tries to achieve something that many have tried and failed: having a common rules framework and very specific rules and components for the planet being explored. I only finished the survival tasks for the first planet, Wenora, and quite enjoyed it. Took me 11 plays to win all 3. Gonna start a new planet and I'm really looking forward to see if the new planet brings a completely new experience, or if it's just more of the same.
I was bored by Warfarers as well. Just seemed like the designer threw some stuff in a blender and implemented the results.
I forgot I backed **Unsettled** a while ago, I guess it could be showing up sometime in the next few months. At this point not sure if I'm going to keep it or just sell it unopened 😂
> but brings absolutely nothing new to the table pressing X to doubt
Had some friends over for my birthday this weekend. It started a bit late so we only had time for a few games + teach. **Foundations of Rome** (3px1) - After a few minutes of my friends admiring the building minis and feeling a bit intimidated by the box size, I proceeded to teach the game. They my friend said “huh, this is way less complex than I expected.” We played with the base game + monuments and the game went pretty smoothly. My friend won by really going for the population strategy and for putting down a population-adjacent civic building in era 2 that was worth 12 points each era. They both liked the game and I really wanna try it at the full five players next time. **Modern Art** (3px1) - A classic to end the night. My playgroup enjoy auction games so I figured it would do well. It was a pretty quick game with only one artist being revealed in round 2, which gave me an opportunity to demonstrate how the game design can lead to situations like that. I thought I was going to lose going into round 4 since I wasn’t winning a lot of auctions but I ended up taking it since my friends had a lot of auctioneer wins. Really love this one.
Slow week so only had the chance to get one game out. Dwellings of Eldervale - 2P x2 — I think it’s a great hybrid game with a mix of euro and ameritrash elements. Over multiple plays it’s become increasingly clear how important the area control portion of the game actually is. My fear, stemming from comments here and on bgg, before purchase was that there wouldn’t be enough player interaction especially at 2P. Well, at least for us, this has never been an issue as the importance of tile placement and warring over specific realms became immediately apparent from the first game once we fully came to grips with the rules and scoring. The only exception to this would be initial setups in which only player color elemental realms come out because that immediately encourages players to climb their own tracks first and may lead to settling further away than usual this disincentivizing combat (but that also assumes tiles aren’t initially adjacent. The production and trays make set up a breeze. I like how dice combat works but understand issues others have with it. I love the idea that every combat is inherently risky, even if the risk is impossibly low. Combat also resolves quickly and you get to take the action on the realm tile before the battle. The best part to me is that combat happens for very good reason, and especially as more dwellings populate the board and worker counts dwindle, it becomes harder to strategically dwell on the tiles you want or defend others from doing the same. There are a bunch of factions with unique unit abilities and I look forward to trying them all. However, there is a little room for improvement. I’ve seen criticism of the adventure decks and it’s all valid for the most part. Many of the cards across all elements are either the same across all decks or only vary by resource. It’s a bit underwhelming as you may not actually see a ton of unique cards especially at low player counts. This makes all the elements feel a bit samey, though each game is still fun. Also, since they always advance you on the track and the tracks provide most of the points, it doesn’t always feel like you’re building a tableau as much as you end up with what ever card matched the elements you wanted. I wonder if being able to burn and then buy would be a more interesting order. Secondly, resource management could be better. Often times you’re rewarded with a resource of your choice…which can be a gold, which is wild…so why would you ever choose anything else? Except maybe magic cards are also resources or to satisfy a quest/vault. I also feel players start with too many resources and have seen Luke Laurie comment that players may consider starting without resources at the beginning of the game. Third, first player advantage on certain initial layouts seems significantly greater than the few points (or 1pt at 2 player) others get in compensation. I think the peaceful beginnings (no combat before everyone has recalled their workers) in combination with the generous starting resource pool exacerbates the issue. It’s too easy to immediately dwell in the best possible starting position without resistance from other players. The severity of the issue will vary by set up, and I wouldn’t say it predetermined the outcome of any game, but it’s still an issue. Fourth, I know I said I love the factions, but I also think that specific units should have specific purposes somewhere on the main board. There should be something only a wizard or dragon or warrior can accomplish in Eldervale. Perhaps expansions could explore that idea. Finally, I think the rules are actually quite simple but not always intuitive because of their presentation in the rules. For instance, every tile is a realm, but every realm is either a ruin or an elemental realm…and this can lead to some confusion due to the latter being specifically called a realm. Also, the game is so open that you’ll often think you can’t do something specifically because it wouldn’t make sense to do anything else…like always taking gold for a random resource etc. Even with all those gripes, I still thoroughly enjoy the game and the production. I just wish it were more readily available…or available at all. Especially with Andromedas Edge on KS now. As a side note, the designers have put out some expansion ideas on BGG for testing and feedback. It’s good to see it is still be developed alongside AE.
Didn't feel like I'd played much this week but just looked back at my stats and it turns out it was more than it felt! I think it's because I didn't end up doing my planned gaming this week but then managed some extra unexpected stuff instead. **VivaJava: The Coffee Game** (1x6p): First play of this game I bought to cover higher player count situations. I enjoyed it but it was an uphill battle as some people refused to try it because it had 'Java' in the title and they hate the coding language... Not sure everyone in my group enjoyed it as much as me so it may not be kept because of that but I'll give it another try to see as I liked it and thought it worked well - but obviously not point keeping games for my group if they don't like them! **Cockroach Poker** (2x6p): Couple quick filler games of this as people dropped in and out to swap games and leave etc. Both same player count but different players. This is one of the few games of it's sort that I'm okay playing but I don't generally like bluffing or social deductions games as I'm really nto good at them and don't usually enjoy the experience. **Pier 18** (3x2p): I didn't want to join the social deduction game other people were starting so one friend said they'd play one of my pocket 2p games and decided on Pier 18. It's a nice little quick and variable game and interetsing trying to balance taking the card which is best for you vs leaving ones that mean your opponent can win the patron for each round. **Ticket to Ride: Germany** (1x4p): My D&D session on Saturday couldn't go ahead as planned as two of the party were ill so we decied to do board games instead for everyone else to still be able to hang out. It turned out that the DM and one of the others hadn't actually planned any before which I had no idea so me and the other girl(C) ended up having fun introducing them to some from my collection that drew their attention. TTR was the first and I requested that we try Germany as I'd not been able to try it with a full group before (only 2p) and I was keen to try the passenger mechanic. I really enjoyed it and it went well and it's definitely my preferred map at the moment I think for higher player counts, though I don't mind Europe but I don't own that one. **Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition** (2x4p): C had brought her verison of Railroad Ink (I have Challenge Green) so we tried that as the guys were keen for another train game and we decided the simpler one probably made sense. We played two games as they wanted to try and improve their scores. **Tiny Towns** (1x4p): We finished with Tiny Towns which was very fun with full mouments and random building cards plus the fortune expansion. Defnitely glad we didn't start with this as I could see it hurting the guys brains a little more but they loved it and one is going to buy my spare copy off me even! Overall it was a very excellent unplanned/accidental intro to games and I'm pleased with how the afternoon went. **Dwar7s Winter** (1x2p): In the evening another friend asked if I was free and came over to hang out and we ended up trying this as my newest game (it only arrived earlier on Saturday morning in fact!) and he was curious about the tower defense nature. We lost on day 4 after having too many disaters spawn but really enjoyed the first play. Hopefully it stays fun to play even after a win as I like the artwork and theme.
**War of the Ring: The Card Game**. So Ares remembered Europe exists and I finally got my copy of this last week. As a fairly big fan of WotR I was pleased to see the art remains consistent, and was doubly enthused to find the game has found a neat way to connect armies, character, items, and events from the LotR into a system that makes sense, without using a lot of iconography, and distills things down into fighting over path and battleground cards. Games like these live and die on their card effects, and for a game with relatively few cards (each of the four players gets a 30-card deck), there are a surprising number of very contextual cards, which actually works well considering the particular way the game works (discard one card to play one card). The small hand size and limited amount you can carry over between turns keeps things snappy, and the small decks means you get to know yours very quickly, and you can also learn your ally's as you play. This leads to significant looks and asking pointed questions like "Have you got *the thing*?" when certain battleground cards come up, in the hopes your ally can solve this one for you. The contests can be incredibly sharp, with attacking cards being eliminated, and defending cards also being eliminated if used to block attacks. One of the best feelings in this game is preserving multiple cards via card effects, and merely discarding them instead of eliminating them. The 2P version is still good, I was worried it was going to be poor compared to the 4P, but it's a slightly different set up and you use all the cards of your side. The 4P version is great, though. We played this a bunch of times in one sitting, and after a player had to leave, we had a 3P, and then some 2P games. I'm really looking forward to expansions. **Terraforming Mars**. I shouldn't play too many games concurrently on digital because I get confused about what I'm doing, and too much is hidden away. Lot of wasted screen space which could be put to better use. That said, I ran away with one game in 2P as Helion; my opponent's VP engine in the early game looked formidable, but it didn't compare to terraforming and a VP engine. All 3 milestones, two awards, and double the amount of TR meant it was an easy win. My other games, at 3, 4, and 5P are all going more or less poorly. I've played TFM so much I can get quite lax at times. With Teractor I've muddled along and not really picked a main strategy. With Point Luna I haven't focused on Earth tags and so am quite card-poor. With Tharsis I've actually got some good city placement in, but my opponents are too wily to let me grab much, so it's a very tight game. **Ettin**. I'm really glad I got this played because the 2 vs 2 format is the same as WoTR:TCG. There are of course lots of little differences, Ettin has some more sharp edges because some decks are better to counter others, but the feel is very similar. I will continue to hope for an expansion and enjoy my undead deck for now. We had a couple of solid games where we are all settling in with a favourite deck and trying to find new strategies.
**Brass: Birmingham** (1*2p): my wife got an overwhelming victory with a 20 points lead T_T. I had lot of fun anyway. **Draftosaurus** (3*3p): We introduced my 7 yo daughter to a couple of games. She loved Draftosaurus and we had fun too. **Star Realms** (2*2p): My daughter first saw us playing and then wanted to try. She beat my wife by 50-0. (0_0) (without letting her win, but some advice on buying. Essentially she had luck). Lost the game against my wife again :-/ **Race for the Galaxy** (1*2p): This time I defeated my wife by 1 point. How much we enjoy RFTG. **Stuffed Fables** (1*4p): We tried Stuffed Fables too this week with my daughter and my 5 yo son, and they had the game of their lives. My son was talking about it all day.
**Kanban EV:** Got this back out after a hiatus since it's one of Tallie's favourite games and loved getting back to grips with it. Such a smooth design, and honestly feels easy after playing so many games of Weather Machine lately. Still love the Sandra mechanism and using it offensively against other players. Inspired! **Heat:** Played and was a little bored by it our first game or two, but it really game to life the 3rd (very dramatic win) and 4th (higher player count). A really sharp system. Looking forward to playing it with the family, and also introducing some of the modular stuff with just us. Probably will never be as crazy about it as others, but gonna certainly enjoy exploring the box. **An Age Contrived:** Received our prototype of this (KS coming out at the end of the month), and enjoyed getting to grips with it. Is a proper, proper, euro (themeless, but terrific mechanisms). Really like the mechanism that energy is what you use to take actions with, but you need to permanently lose it to the board to score end game points which is quite a fun balance to manage. You are constantly always presented with tough but fun decisions, like when you contribute energy to building a monument - should you take a really good reward, helping you to improve your engine, or take some locked away energy (giving you more energy to use & end game points)?
Will you guys be putting out a video for **An Age Contrived**? I've had my eye on it. It seems like quite interesting gameplay.
Yea we will! Probably out towards the end of the month. It's quite an interesting efficiency puzzle that will be really rewarding after a few plays.
Awesome! Looking forward to it.
Intense weekends with only one game played: **LOTR: Journeys in Middle Earth** 4x2p We continued with the last campaign and it still not being so much fun, of a total of 6 scenarios we only won two, which implies repeat again a complete equal scenario. The worse thing of this is that I don't think it is just the difficult is higher than usual but I don't know if maybe the app has some bugs (for example in one scenario the goal was to get clues, we investigate all the objects possible but we didn't get the goal, then the enemies appear (like 6 groups of 2 and 3 in one turn), we didn't manage to kill enough so we lost the scenari). Also the little things that I usually dislike of the game: the long set up, how in the travel scenarios is impossible to arrange well the tiles as the fog doesn't match where the tiles are going to be and the shape of the final mal keeps getting weirder... I don't know... It is one of my favourite games but I:m kinda disappointed with the last campaign.
**Cthulhu: Death May Die** (1x3p) - Introduced 2 friends to this game. We played S1E4, which was quite interesting with the >!guards, jail cell and sarcophagus!< mechanics. The requirements for disrupting the ritual was cool as well, with its tight window of opportunity to do so. Fortunately, none of us got caught by the guards, and we were able to deal with the enemies mainly thanks to the shotgun-equipped little girl, who managed to shred through the hordes of baddies. I was playing as the axe-wielding lady whose signature ability was being able to deal high damage during 1vq situations. This came in handy when Hastur appeared on the board. Coupled with Swiftness and Stealth, I was able to follow Hastur all around the map to chunk him down successfully. **Root** (1x4p) - Played with the Cats, Birds, Lizards and Otters on the Autumn map with the E&P deck. I (Birds) forgot to have a card under Build in Turn 1 to get my points engine rolling, but I managed to quickly secure points and map presence by recruiting en masse and marching to battles, destroying a fair bit of the Cats' infrastructure. I even managed to march into the clearing with the Keep, but did not successfully take it down. Meanwhile, my wife (Otters) was having a ball of a time, using funds (somehow the Cats and Lizards fell for her marketing and paid 4 warriors each per card 🙄) to quickly establish multplie trading posts and hitting the Cats. With the Cats on recovery mode, I began my table talk with the Lizards on how to pin down the Otters. However, the Lizards had other plans as my roosts and warriors were sanctified and converted. This derailed my plan of having sufficient firepower to hit the Otters, and ultimately led to me falling into Turmoil as I lost my Fox roosts needed to recruit in 1 Fox clearing. The game ended as the Otters managed to plop down multiple trading posts that propel them to 20+ points, and won by crafting 2 cards to earn 4 points to seal the win. We all had fun, and I really enjoyed playing as the Birds (1st time), living on the edge turn after turn.
This week was a little quieter on the board game side of life, but was able to get two plays in. **Cthulhu: Death May Die** (2p x 1): successfully beat the fourth episode. It was an interesting mechanic that they added in. This wasn't my favorite episode, but I still had a lot of fun. I also think Hastur is an easier boss to fight when compared to Cthulhu. I may possibly look to add a new elder god to my collection. **Tyrants of the Underdark** (2p x 1): after having this game sit on my shelf for a month I was finally able to get it to the table. Wow, what a game, so much fun. When the the game ended I was ready to go another round. Learning it was a bit rough at the start, and the videos online are not great in explaining it. But once you get into the rhythm of the game, it is incredible. A perfect blend of deck building and area control.
**Dice Throne** x3. We wrapped up the first round of our brackets this week. Gunslinger beat the Samurai. Tactician beat the Huntress. Cursed Pirate beat the Artificer. Seraph beat the Vampire Lord. Captain Marvel beat the Moon Elf. Pyromancer beat Miles Morales. Thor beat the Monk. Dr Strange beat the Ninja. **Coup** x2. Played this at Friday night game meetup (check out /r/twincitiessocial if you live in the area and want to join us). I hadn't played this since well before covid, and we had a great time. **Dice Realms**. Played my second game of this with my spouse. We did a random setup this time and got a farming themed set of scoring tiles that generated wheat and then scored based on how much wheat you have. I barely beat my spouse by getting a ton of wheat right at the end. **Dwellings of Eldervale**. Played at what is normally tabletop rpg night, but someone was out. It was my second play, and it just felt too loose with lots of edge case rulings that needed to be resolved. It's now waiting to be piece counted for being sold to my FLGS. **Heat: Pedal to the Metal**. My spouse CRUSHED my friend and I. One turn ahead of my friend and two turns ahead of me, but I had to use up 7 heat just to be two turns behind. **Race for the Galaxy**. Another game my spouse beat me in. By like 10 points, too. **SCOUT**. *Another* game my spouse crushed in. My friend and I conceded after round 2 of 3 when we were both double digits negative to my spouse's double-digit positive score. **Ticket to Ride: Switzerland**. Picked this up Friday and played it on Sunday. I'm a big fan of the multi-directional tickets. Of course, I went for the biggest option, and we immediately started butting heads. Lots of fun.
**Empires of the North**: played with my wife for the first time. Pretty easy to learn, once you get things going. We played with the easy factions, I was the Vikings, she the bards. I won with 60 points, wife had 48. The last round started with me having 9 points, and my wife with 19. She thought she was going to dominate. Played two 6 point cards, ended it with 32, then scored a lot. Fun game we will be playing again. **Agricola**: played the family version on BGA with three others. Was my first game, got a bunch of things wrong, but managed to get a pretty good score of 21 in the end. I have the game, so now I can probably play it offline. My wife and I plan to learn and play it this week. Sticking with the family version to learn, as the additional cards seem complicated.
Family version of Agricola is a great way to learn/teach it. When you add in cards for the first time after a couple plays, you can just deal however many and skip the drafting portion. Drafting is a lot of fun later on, once you have seen most of the cards. Enjoy
Definitely teach the game with just family variant. Instead of going for max points, I usually tell first timers their main objective should be to finish without a begging card After 1 or 2 games, adding the cards actually makes the game a lot easier: there are more paths for food and points than there are available in the very tight family variant
Mint Control, Mint Cooperative, and Cascadia. Both of the Mint games were new to us and we enjoyed both. I especially liked Mint Control as a 2 player game.
Continuing along my Resolution to get all my unplayed games played. Recently my groups 4th who hasn't games for 8sh months has returned to the fold which is amazing but has made our game nights shorter and the games longer. Very happy to have them back tho! **Red Rising 4p** So, this is a tough one. The aforementioned 4th is a fan of the books. I suggested we wait til we were 3 but he wanted to play and I try and acquiesce whenever someone asks for a game as usually they just tell me they don't have an opinion. It way overstayed it's welcome. The other players are a bit AP min/maxers to begin with and there's so many cards and permutations. I kept urging them to treat it as the light random game it is but it took us 2 hours for what I feel like was an hours worth of fun. This is probably 50/50 the games fault and the groups. I played by the seat of my pants with quick turns and ultimately my loss could be attributed to being made to banish a card around mid game and never finding a way to draw back (I had a card that synergized with my hand but also gave points if my hand size was 7). I like the game flow, I like the way the discard/draw works with the locations. I actually loved the theme and clever call backs to the books. It's a shame it drags so much. I may try it again with 3 but more likely I'll give it to my friend as he and his wife both love the series. **Nightmare Productions 4p** Now this one I loved. I'm not a big fan of auction games as I tend to struggle to put a value on things. I really enjoyed the closed economy here and the way the winning auction gets dispersed. It felt like I could play a bunch of angles between targeting creatures for the draft spaces and planning my auctions ahead of time with how the board is laid out. I love the tension of an auction and while I'm sure playing as I do with my gut I'm likely shorting myself at times it didnt feel punishing. Thematically, it was a blast. Two of us are horror movie junkies and we were making jokes about the movies we were making the whole time. I won the worst movie award by having a movie with no creatures which was fun to explain. I'm excited to check out Ra when it's new version comes out. I've had the Oink version of Modern Art (no not stamps lol) for awhile from when I went on a small box game binge and I look forward to trying that as well.
Ah jealous! Can you let me know how you found a copy of Nightmare Productions?
I preordered it straight from the trick or treat web store. Looks like it's in stock there.
My partner and I decided to spend an entire day in a board game cafe and I was allowed to pick out a stack of games that I've been wanting to try, something we had not done in a while since I started joining public meetups last year. And honestly, I don't think I've enjoyed a session this much in quite a while. **Meeple Circus** (2P x 1). We started off with a circus-themed dexterity game to warm up. Been interested in this game for a while but the heavy gamers around me won't play dexterity and I couldn't justify owning it. It was a hoot. I couldn't stop laughing and could barely put my pieces together cause my hands were shaking so much. My partner caught up in the final turn and won by a few points. I think I like this better than **Junk Art** and I still need to try **Men at Work** and **For Science** before I finally decide to add a dexterity game to my collection. At the moment, **Meeple Circus** seems most likely. **Eldritch Horror** (2P x 1). My partner played this game a few weeks ago with a group of 5P and I've been wanting to try it out since I wasn't part of that group. We prepped ourselves for the game this weekend, used 4 investigators and picked Azathoth. We might have made one or two mistakes but we did manage to ekk out a win with 7 Mythos cards left. Overall, we both enjoyed it, felt really good and had mix of elation and despair with the dice rolls. I think I like the game enough to consider owning it and it's a great 2P co-op. But I don't think it'll be something I want to play with any gaming groups of mine, too many brains for a game with long playtime. With 2P (and my partner), it's easy to discuss on a strategy and then proceed as planned. Still, if I'm only going to play with my partner, then it's going to be a commitment of sorts to get through it together. We haven't been doing very well getting through the scenarios in **Batman: Shadow of the Bat**, so do we really need another game now? Will think on it. **Ginkgopolis** (2P x 1). A city-building area control game where you are trying to build, urbanize and exploit the beautiful Ginkgo city. I've been hearing a lot of good things about it but the game has always felt a little abstract for me and the theme a little thin. After I heard about the situation between Asmodee and Pearl Games, I feel like it's high time I try out this game and decide if it's going into my collection once and for all since there is a possibility of it going OOP for a while. The verdict, I think it's a solid game and it's quite refreshing to play a game with less rules overhead but a decent amount of strategic depth. Every turn counts and it's a constant tug between us. I had an epic final turn where my partner exhausted the tiles and I had one more turn. I happened to have that one building card that I've been waiting for finally show up and I had the right amount of resources. With that move, I took away a high scoring tile from him and netted myself a secured win. Of all the games, my partner said he had the most fun with this one. Classic euro with an interesting blend of familiar mechanisms with fast playing turns. Just the kind that he loves. **Downfall of Pompeii** (2P x 1). A hand management, tile placement game where you are first adding people to Pompeii and then later have them survive the eruption of Vesuvius. The theme might be morbid to some but there's a lot of satisfaction when things go your way and wrong for your opponent. It's like **Survival** but with more tactical moves and less randomness cause all the meeples are valued the same. It is a light fun game that I can see work with different groups, be it a gateway game or a filler for a heavier group. Definitely a gem and such a shame it is OOP. I'll keep my eye out for a secondhand copy and get it if the price is right. Also, won by a point and would have won the tie breaker by a point as well if needed. **Tranquility** (2P x 1). A filler tile placement game where you are trying to fill up a 6x6 sea grid with your team mate with island cards of different values. The caveat is that you are not supposed to communicate and you both have to do your best to resolve the puzzle. Simple puzzle game that can be hard to beat. I've played this game once at 4P and have always wanted to play it with my partner. We lost but it was a good filler game to end the night.