The rules are pretty simple:
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Play a card
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Get/Build stuff
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Buy more cards
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Add up your points
High score wins.
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Don’t forget that cards work both as an action card and a scoring card. So that Architect card is also a Jupiter card, which is pts
Vesta (there’s only one and it’s your Senator card) - 1 VP per $10
Jupiter - 1VP per non-brick city
Saturn - 1VP per province you are present
Mercury - 2Vp per TYPE of city you have a house
Mars - 2VP per colonist boat/person you have out
Minerva - nVP per city of a type you have, based on which Minerva card you bought. So a Weaver gives you VP per cloth city
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Hope Small Islands makes a bit more sense now. Not a perfect game but I have an unreasonable fondness for it.
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It definitely makes more sense to me after playing it.
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W.E.B will be available at OBG soon. Keen to try because I don’t want to spend stupid money on it
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I’ll give it a try, but I don’t have high expectations. Not every Splotter is a banger.
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Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It’d been on my radar for a while.
After feeling somewhat stagnant on BGA I went through their catalog again and have been having something of a renaissance:
Small Islands: On a first play it feels a bit like flailing, where you are trying to manipulate the game state but without the information to really do so. But I get a distinct sense that the goals aren’t as varied as you might initially want (by design) and the more familiar with the game you are, the more heads up you get, trying to read what other people are doing and trying to obfuscate what you are trying to do. There were also a lot of ahas of scoring islands early and then not being able to score them for much more later… I had one super lucky round that gave me more than half my points. I’d be interested to get to know this game better.
Vale of Eternity: This has been a hit at home and I was surprised it had been on BGA all this time. Definitely a “more than the sum of its parts” game where relatively overdone ideas come together to create a drafting engine builder that has yet to not delight.
Knarr: I keep playing this and keep liking it more. I was saying in the chat, it works at every level. If you want to plop a few cards down, move up some tracks, get some dopamine and maybe win? Knarr is great as a passive activity. Want to drill in and chain your next four turns together, maximize synergy between the scoring paradigms, hate draft, and push your opponents to discard from their tableau? You can do that, too. Knarr goes as deep as you want it to (well, with a limit. But it goes deep enough if that’s how you want to play).
Cartographers: I don’t like roll & writes. But I have not yet isolated why that is. I think I don’t like 7 Wonders and Russian Railroads for the same reason as R&W. But I do like Cartographers. It’s a polyomino puzzle with Isle of Skye’s scoring framework. Very breezy and very easy async. Not my favorite, but it’s hard to turn down as it goes down so smooth you can never take offense.
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Anyone want to see how this functions?
Play Decrypto for free with me: Play Decrypto online from your browser
Table for 6, 3v3
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Anyone up for Caylus: https://bga.li/t/737929576
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Anyone curious about Azure?
Play Azure for free with me: Play Azure online from your browser
It’s by Trevor Benjamin (Undaunted, War Chest, Mandala, Great Plains) and Brett J Gilbert (Mandala, Guild of Merchant Explorers).
I’m reading the rules now.
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I joined an open Azure table and… it’s quite interesting. 1v1, but they’ve done a good job with the puzzle of keeping it competitive and interactive without being combative. Go-like aspect of placing stones to influence things spatially, but interesting constraints on where you can place your stones at any given time so you’re playing the puzzle/engine while also engaged in a few layers of area control.
Separately, I’m game for losing again at The Great Zimbabwe. What about everyone else?
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I’ll put this as a PSA because I doubt I’ll play it - not great at learning games on BGA
Molly House is in alpha
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Up for TGZ again and Molly House (never played), but maybe the latter once it graduates from alpha status.
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Im up for TGZ
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Play Azure for free with me: Play Azure online from your browser
And I’ll open a 3p Zimbabwe tomorrow, unless someone wants to set it up today.
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Great Zim: Online Board Gamers
Good heavens, @ing Benkyo I just saw @bengeile’s name. I wonder how that dude is doing?
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Dump for the week:
Irish Gauge (moved to beta): Play Irish Gauge online from your browser
Barrage (haven’t played in a year or two, will have to re-learn): Play Barrage online from your browser
Lorenzo il Magnifico: Play Lorenzo il Magnifico online from your browser
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OK, not a good selection. Something else?
Play Carson City for free with me: Play Carson City online from your browser
Play A Feast for Odin for free with me: Play A Feast for Odin online from your browser
(with norwegians)
Play Azure for free with me: Play Azure online from your browser
Play Mandala for free with me: Play Mandala online from your browser
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Keen to try this if you do another game
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I’m going to overtly pull a few people into Carson City with at least one empty chair for anyone who wants it.
Mid-detail overview / How to Play
It’s a worker placement game with contested spaces.
Core loop of the game:
- Buy parcels of land on the map
- Buy buildings to place on your parcel
- Make money via your buildings
- Claim scoring spaces to exchange money for points (or points per parcel, etc)
Which sounds pretty cut and dry, except for the splotter-esque sandbox of tools at your command.
The core mechanic is worker placement, but it is a “place first, resolve at end of round” situation, where nearly every spot is contestable.
If someone places a worker on a parcel (land spot), building, or action, anyone else can place a worker there as well and a fight is resolved before actions are taken - winner gets the action, loser gets their worker back (adding strength to any future fights, and also available as an extra worker next round).
You can also place a worker on someone else’s building to take half the income. Or place a worker on your own building to protect it (or attempt to kick an opponent out before income is earned).
Finally, there is nearly no “automatic points” - apart from 2 points per building at the end of the game. All other points are earned by controlling action spaces. In the first round, there is a $2:1 point space (along with the same for 3-5) - enough for everyone, but some more efficient than others. In the second round, the 2:1 spot is gone. Now there’s only three spaces with the best one being $3 : 1 point. By the last round there is only a single space left - 5:1 - and everyone wants it. You’ll have to plan when to score (because you also NEED that money to buy parcels and buildings in the next round) and work to control the right space at the right time.
The actions are resolved along a snaking strip at the top of the board. First are the pleasantries - a 3 gun token that lends strength to the player who wins it for the round, some roads, and a peaceful “extra money” spot that anyone can take to top off their bank before the rest of the actions resolve, with no fighting.
Then there is the parcel purchasing - parcels are cheap but get more expensive the more development is already around them.
Then the building market - prices printed on the board. Unpurchased buildings slide left to the low-cost spaces at the end of each round, you know the deal. Building economy comes in a few shapes:
- Ranches don’t need roads, and earn a small amount of money for each empty square around them. General stores earn money for each of your ranches as well as each “house” next to them.
- Mines earn good money based on the number of mountains around them. Banks go to city center and earn for each mine you own as well as each “house” next to them.
- Saloons earn great income as long as surrounded by houses.
- Churches prevent anyone from robbing adjacent buildings. Prisons provide no income but do provide guns for winning fights. Hotels provide tiny income but count as two houses to bolster your nearby businesses.
After the building market, income is totaled and parceled out, and then the strip of scoring spaces.
The last wrinkle is the combat and characters. Combat is semi-deterministic. Number of Unplaced workers + Number of gun tokens (acquired by building ranches and mines, prisons, or winning that revolver token at start of round) + roll of a D6. So you can control the advantage but not guarantee the outcome. Tie goes to whoever passed first, so passing early to control tiebreakers + leaving workers in supply for fights and the next round is absolutely a tool in your chest. And remember that the loser of a fight gets their worker back, which means +1 for the next fight.
Characters are drafted at the start of each round and gift you a few things. The captain lets you buy more workers - extra actions or extra fight. The Outlaw increases your fight strength by 3 - popular in the last round to rob everyone else and control the scoring. The Sheriff lets you go first and gives you an extra sheriff worker, who cannot be contested for the spot he is put on. The grocer is freaking awesome, and DOUBLES your income for whatever KIND of building you tell her - so if you have three saloons watch out for this lady. The Settler helps you buy parcels and the Chinese worker helps you build roads and buildings (delicaaatee…). There’s a lot of options here and it triggers some interesting dynamics for each round.
Each character also has a carryover limit, meaning how much cash they can protect to holdover to the next round. Extra cash is lost/converted to points at an unfavorable 10:1 rate. A character like the grocer can carry over $60 which is pretty generous. The Outlaw can only carry over $20, so you’ll have to plan to score your cash if you’re working with him.
That is the spine of the game - the rest (like rules for roads and houses and exact cost of parcels) is in the manual or can be hashed out in the chat.
Play Carson City for free with me: Play Carson City online from your browser
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