The three biggest olgs in the US are Miniature Market, Boardlandia, and Gamenerdz. They’ve each got their thing, but Gamenerdz has (for four years) run a prime day style thing in the summer. It’s a whole affair and has some bonkers sales.
They release clues and a schedule beforehand. Then you sit at your computer and refresh like mad at the scheduled time and try to buy it before the 1,000 units go out of stock.
Then reddit and bgg are all alight with people sharing what they got, what they missed, what had a restock, what clues they think the community got wrong, etc. Frantically asking for an opinion on a game before it stocks out…
There was so much work and so little time to actually play games… so instead I bought games. And it‘s not like 3 of these aren‘t going to be at SPIEL where I am going in less than a month…
Fischen or Fishing is a trick taker that has you play tricks for the next round with cards from the tricks you took the previous round introducing new more powerful cards from the „sea“ (stack) for those who haven‘t won enough tricks… sadly 3-5 players but I couldn‘t resist getting my hands on Friedemann Friese‘s take on the hype ASAP.
The Gang is cooperative Texas Hold‘em. There is an actual poker deck in there and a bunch of poker chips and for each hand that is played you want to communicate (without using your words) with the other players how good your hand is by taking one of the numbered poker chips for the current phase (pre-flop, flop, turn and river). By the fourth phase you better have a good idea how the hands on the table are ranked (plays 3-6). If you manage to pick the right order of the poker chips, you get to crack one of the three safes. Otherwise you cause an alarm because of course it‘s a „heist game“. You win if you crack 3 safes before the police catches wind of you. In the advanced mode you also get „complications“ and „bonusses“. Sounds quite nice, no idea how hard it is going to be in actual play.
Vale of Eternity was just on SUSD. I bought it after seeing the video existed but before watching it. Because I did. Sounds like a nice card game and also is not expensive. Lots of air in the box though. There is an expansion announced or out…
Space AI Puzzle is cooperative puzzle solving and luckily it plays 2 so we could try it immediately. There is a 4 x 4 space ship with unique rooms identified by 4 different symbols. There are 6 astronauts in differently colored space suits and 4 keys. One player is the mute AI that can only communicate with a bunch of symbols f.e. colors, key symbols, room symbols or arrows, checkmarks etc. Which symbols the AI speaks is determined by the scenario which also gives a number of rounds, number of symbols the AI can play in a round to give clues to the humans. Because the AI knows (a bit like codenames) where the astronauts are supposed to be on the ship to reactivate the engines (or something like that) and who has to have which key… quickly the time runs out.
There are a bunch of setup cards that get combined with the 20 or so scenarios the first 2 are really easy where you can give the clues needed in two or three rounds but it gets much harder when you have fewer symbols and extra rules like the room that humans aren‘t supposed to enter etc. It is pretty fun so far. But also lots of air in the box. Keen to move onto higher difficulties.
Well, I got some haul today, and two more games coming:
Currently on our dining table are Quacks of Quedlinburg The Duel, Splendor Duel and Beer & Bread. We tried the first two at the gaming pub on Sunday and the last one just looks great.
On order are Kutna Hora and The Vale of Eternity. I took the plunge on the latter after the SUSD video (especially since it’s only $40), but the French-language version won’t be available until 30 September. Will receive both once the whole order can be fulfilled.
Got my copy of Cascadero today - should have had it a month ago, but apparently I failed to fill out the pledge manager, doh. So happy to finally get it.
