Yeah, I got sticker shock from seeing Dinosaur Gauge, even without postage (it’s a small detour on my commute to collect) it’s very pricey!
I do like Tinderblox, draw a card, stack it, if anything falls off your out. Everything I want in a dexterity game. Junk Art is more ‘gamey’ for sure
Bought a copy of undaunted Stalingrad from a bookshop for £54. Having never tried any undaunted, maybe I’ve bit off more than I can chew.
Bought Cat in the Box now it’s appeared in the UK.
It’s got one of those inserts. Where they’ve tried and made it less functional than a cardboard valley.
I got Terra Nova. OG Guilders seems to be into this as it strips the tracks and all that for a light/medium weight territorial game. I’m sincerely very keen on what it offers. I understood that it’s not a Terra nor Gaia. I am hoping that it provides a different appeal.
My copy of Ark Nova arrived 2 days early. so i had to play a solo 
Well, it came up on sale again, so I caved and bought Knight Fall, and since I had to pay flat rate shipping anyway, I added on the X-Wing: Battle for Yavin scenario pack, despite not having played X-Wing in years now.
Well, I didn’t just buy it - but Darkest Dungeon finally arrived today. All excited to run home and open it and… TADA! OFSTED INSPECTION.
Oh great…
Oathsworn, the standee version.
Now to make a decision on Cthulhu: Death May Die S3 et al.
Good luck with Ofsted! A nice reward once the inspection is done.
Just purchased Jumbo Pirate Stratego for Captain Kori. If you don’t know who that is, please look it up and subscribe to his YouTube channel (Kraken the Box).
Bought Lost Cities and Dune: House Secrets for our friend’s birthday (the 24th) and Christmas gifts, respectively. We saw them today and gave him Lost Cities, only to learn they already owned it.
Oh well, back to the store!
As a suggestion: Lost Cities is a simplified version of Battleline or Schotten Totten (I like Schotten Totten the best of the three, but only because the artwork is better and it’s cheaper). Battleline Medieval is pretty good as well, as is Schotten Totten 2.
You could also go laterally instead of vertically: games like Royal Visit or Lord of the Rings Confrontation are also Knizias, but very different designs. Could be worth a look if you’re looking for a swap.
And then my usual 2 player recommendations: Jaipur, Patchwork, and 7 Wonders Duel. All great.
I know they have Patchwork and 7WD already, so those are a no go. I never seem to see Royal Visit there, but it is a game I enjoy, at any rate. Have not played Battle Line or any of it’s incarnations, despite owning it for years. Maybe LotR:C, as they are fans of the property and own War of the Ring 2nd, if I see it.
If the criteria is two-player games, then see also:
Met up with friends for games (I’ll post about those later, as I have another session today) and to exchange gifts.
Very glad I held off on buying myself Splendor Duel in case someone bought it for me 
Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization Board Game, was half price, and I figured “it’s Chvátil, has to be worth a go”. It can be my Xmas present.
A bit of catching up to do. I haven’t actively bought anything in a while, but I did have some Kickstarter arrivals show up:
John Company: Second Edition
I’m not entirely sure why I pledged for this; it certainly isn’t a game that fits into any of the categories in which I’ve previously expressed a great deal of interest; but looking at the design now and reading through the rulebook, I’m pretty excited. The rulebook is fairly dense so I’ve not tried it out yet, but I do expect to be soloing this soon as a way to explore the pretty impressive design that features a lot of mechanisms combined in interesting ways.
Vinyl w/expansions and Vinyl: Jukebox
Right before this went up on Kickstarter, I had heard about it from a number of different sources as a great family game. Since the Kickstarter funded, I’ve gradually, consistently lost interest in it. About a year before it arrived, I had sent a message through Kickstarter to find out how much I could get by cancelling, but I never actually got a number back, just an acknowledgement of the question.
By the time it arrived on my doorstep, I was prepared to just list it for sale on BGG. But that weekend was busy (a friend’s birthday party and some yardwork that needed done, if I recall?) and they’ve all just sat in a pile in my office for nearly two months. At this point, I think I’ll crack open the base game and see if it’s worth trying to introduce to my partner; whom was the primary inspiration for pledging in the first place (back before I realized that I already had too many games “waiting” for her to play with me).
Frostpunk: The Board Game
This was a BGG Contest win; I got the pre-shaded cube tower, but none of the miniatures. The fulfillment is pretty wild when you think about it… Glass Cannon sent all western western hemisphere copies of this game direct from Poland via FedEx air.
When I won the contest, I was pretty happy but had already, while doing the quiz, decided I had very little interest in the game. Shortly before it arrived, I was looking up information on it and thought the mechanisms were pretty interesting, and I started to get excited about it.
But then I watched a solo playthrough of it and realized that it’s just too depressing for me to want to put on my table. I’ll give it a try to see if that holds true, but I suspect I’ll be selling this in the next couple of months.
Kabuto Sumo: Total Mayhem, Bites: New Recipes, QE: Commodities w/promos for each base game as well.
Of Kabuto Sumo, Bites, and QE, I’ve only managed to actually play Kabuto Sumo, and that was somewhat disappointing because we played with the “simple” rules – and then realized after a few turns we should have just played the full rules because the game was a slog. Still, it’s a fun gimmick and I do think there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had. I think at that point, I had already backed this BoardGameTables (read: Allplay) expansion Kickstarter. The QE expansion has me most excited (but of the games, QE also has me most excited). I don’t grok Bites enough to appreciate what the expansion is adding to the mix.
Regardless, BoardGameTables/Allplay is a local business for me, so I will make an effort to buy just about anything they publish as long as it’s at least minimally promising.
Empyreal: Far Corners, BattleCON: Himel Nine, Millennium Blades: Collusion errata, BattleCON v4 errata
This Kickstarter for “Empyreal: Far Corners” was mostly a joke. Far Corners is a mini-expansion that came in a (torn) paper envelope and adds very little to the game; and wasn’t a great deal even at $9. But as a MB: Collusion (late pledge) and BattleCON: Devastation of the Indines v4 owner (retail), I did want the printed errata.
This arrived about a month ago, but my gaming table has been covered in a game, unplayed, since then until a few nights ago. I finally played the game and put it away so that I could get this (and Frostpunk above) out on my table and organize everything.
The Himel Nine addon was basically me dipping my toe into the BattleCON solo fighters to see how much interest I should have in tracking down more; the fighter is interesting, but I haven’t touched BattleCON since it arrived and I’m not sure how many 2-player game opportunities I’m going to have… so I think I’m done with buying BattleCON for the moment – if at some point in the future I find an opponent (which may be unlikely until my kids are older) and we find BattleCON to be very interesting (which is certainly a possibility, even though I have only a casual interest in 2d fighting games), I’ll look at tracking down a complete v4 set.
Millennium Blades: Collusion, in particular, was overwhelming me when trying to organize while missing some card dividers and other dividers being the wrong symbol or color; in fact, the whole mess had been sitting unorganized in half of the Collusion box since it arrived.
Over the last 2 days, I’ve had a great time finally organizing Millennium Blades. I had forgotten how funny (or, at least, clever) the cards are with their tongue-in-cheek jokes and references to subcultures that have traditionally over the last 20+ years been associated with geekiness and nerdiness. Some of those cards haven’t aged particularly well, but I suppose, if not anything else, it’s an indictment of the lampooned material. I’ve finally sorted, organized and inventoried my near-complete MB collection (I’m currently only missing the 2022 Dice Tower promo
). Because such a terrible decision was made by L99, the game box is awful at being a practical organizer; knowing that they designed it to accommodate sleeved cards (which is partially the cause for it being so terrible), I did add the L99 sleeves set to my late pledge, but have not yet sleeved all 2300-ish cards. I think before I do, I want to investigate other storage options, such as building a custom insert for the Collusion (half-)box. I do think it would be thematically appropriate to sleeve the game, as most of the CCG players I’ve ever known would absolutely sleeve their tournament-ready decks.
I anticipate playing a solo game or two of Millennium Blades as soon as I can… and then maybe a solo game or two of Empyreal. And then, maybe, even a solo game of BattleCON: Devastation?
That catches me up for now; I suspect I’ll be back with at least one new entry after Christmas, as “buy him a boardgame” has become common advice for people asking my partner what to get me for Christmas – less so now than years past because I’m already out of room and need to re-organize and probably find another shelf or two.
With Splendor Duel off the table, I put in an order for the Contractors expansion for Red Cathedral (it was on offer - the main reason for the order) and threw in Scout.
Interested to hear how most of these go down. Particularly sitting with John company right now trying to assemble a willing group.