This is an obscure one but I had a friend bring Medusa’s Garden over from America. Included in the pic is the oversize delivery box they carried all the way in their luggage without realising.
It was available at the Indie Night Market at PAX and probably qualifies more as a parlour game than a board game. It’s an all-versus-one activity where Perseus holds a mirror and can only look at all the “statue” players through it, rather than seeing them directly. One of the statues is secretly Medusa and needs to tap the others (after which they collapse) without Perseus noticing who it is that’s moving.
If Perseus can call Medusa out he wins, otherwise the statues and Medusa win as a group. It seems very silly and a good one for something like a Christmas gathering.
I’ve been waiting for Recall to become available since SPIEL. it was recommended to me by someone, who like me enjoys Revive. Bonus: no air in the box after punching.
Caesar was on my waffle list for a while… it has probably been mentioned somewhere recently to slide into that order.
Oo, please tell us about both when you play them! Recall’s cover art looks like beautiful PC game “Gorgoroa”, and I’ve been hearing good things about Caesar for a long time.
I got Caesar a while ago. Only played it once, but only because it’s not really wife’s type of game with her current cognitive difficulties. I thought it was pretty dang good.
I’m a fan of Caesar!, both at 2p and solo. And I know you’ll be solo-ing it, so this is to let you know that the Poison and Centurion expansions really elevate the game for solo play! You don’t need to start with them included, but I’d suggest adding them into the mix fairly soon.
Caesar at 2p plays a lot like Samurai at 2p - which is a great thing. As far as quality. As far as, do I keep this or just play Samurai? it’s a hard question for Caesar.
Caesar solo is an early Turczi - which is to say a nearly endless flowchart of check this then check that then check that then check that and maybe at some point do something. As with most Turczi’s, it does flow into a good rhythm insofar as you will generally be doing just 2 or 3 things and the rest of the flowchart is edge cases, but still it’s pretty clunky.
I also found the solo game-able - meaning you can play the bot logic instead of playing the game. And once you see it, it’s hard to play “natural.” So I shelved it.
On a big upside, Blitzkrieg and Caesar fit into the same box (and have the same dimensions, so you can use one base and one top to make a combobox. So if you like one there’s no reason not to like two : )
I didn’t try the solo with centurion/poison, so maybe I should.
Yes, I can only agree with that. It works well once you’re in the flow of it, as you say, but first impressions of it were poor.
Well that’s not helping! (I’m doing so well at not buying Blitzkrieg.)
(Edit: Blitzsar!).
You should – they’re a bit of a game-changer. I immediately found that Italia and the Senate became less important and the map tends to populate from all corners, and fill up in ways that it usually didn’t when using only the base rules. It’s still not the same thing as playing an unpredictable human of course, but it nevertheless makes the decision space more interesting, and the games more satisfying.
I sold Nature Big Box for the smaller more modest retail edition. I bought Nature base game + Jurassic exp + Events exp + Flight exp. I like the sound of the other two modules. I’d call them “biomes” expansion as they are focused on the environment they are set in. I’ll skip them for now and reconsider in a latter time.
Lords of Vegas: Americana - I skipped this expansion when I bought the base game from the US, fearing the import fees they’d charge me. A few days later, someone in the UK was selling it. I bought it. It offers different maps that changes the rules of the game
I started with the TV show, and thought it was great (and still do). The radio series is the best, but I also love the visual madness of the TV version. Give me either and I’ll be having a good time :).
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