This week on “pillbox Bought A Bunch Of Stuff And A Lot Of It Arrived While He Was Moving And Organizing His Collection” sees a number of online game store orders that arrived after waiting for the customary pre-order or back-order title to finally be available.
- Clinic: Deluxe Edition -
I thoroughly enjoyed Alban Viard’s Tramway Engineer’s Workbook as a game, as a conceit for a puzzle, and as a way of turning some classic game design patterns on their heads and producing a lovely solitaire experience you can fiddle with on the sofa or in bed. So when I finally caught up on SU&SD’s podcast where Matt discussed his impression of Clinic, it struck me as something I should at least check out.
- Trismegistus: The Ultimate Formula -
This one appealed to me because of the “heavy” and puzzle-y description that featured dice drafting as a core mechanism. I honestly don’t think my partner will partake in this, but should COVID-19 ever subside, I know my former neighbor would be estatic to check this out as well. Having a solo mode, in the mean time, doesn’t hurt.
- Kingsburg (Second Edition) -
Classic euro-games that I never had a chance to check out? Yes, there are a lot of them. It seems the community is somewhat split on whether this is “an evergreen classic” or “outdated and a relic of history”. Honestly I don’t know. Z-Man productions are usually quite nice and this is no exception. It says it plays at 2 so it may have a chance of getting table time soon.
- Deception: Murder in Hong Kong w/ Undercover Allies -
I’m not usually excited about hidden role games, especially those that require lying to your friends. This seems unique enough that it was on my want list, but it very rarely comes up on the secondary market; seemingly only doing so when it’s between print-runs and the seller thinks (quite rightly) that they can likely sell it for new-or-better prices. So I opted to pick it up retail when it hit a daily deal. The following week I found the expansion on sale as well and grabbed that while I was at it.
- Fort -
The day that this arrived from my pre-order finally fulfilling, my partner texted me and asked if I had heard about a game called “Fort”; she said she saw it when our FLGS posted about it on Facebook and thought it sounded fun. I grabbed it out of the shipping box and stashed it away as a Christmas gift. Why? I mean, clearly I pre-ordered it for myself, it seems disingenuous to then gift it to my partner… well, she just likes opening presents and I try to find as many different things to wrap as I can. So, I’ve had it in my house for about 2 months now, but I won’t get to play it until at least Christmas.
- Horrified -
Oddly, this was the game in that OGS order that was supposed to be the Christmas gift for my partner… so… it will be, even though I wished this past Halloween that I could have gotten it out to play with my partner (we ended up not playing anything thematic leading up to Halloween, sadly). Soon, this too will be wrapped and under a Christmas tree.
- Crazy Eggz -
A reimplementation of Dancing Eggs, a game I’ve heard discussed a number of times exclusively by Eric Summerer of the Dice Tower podcast. It probably won’t be around very long (I’ve already seen it hit some bargain bins), so I grabbed it up to have the chance to play it with my kids when they’re a bit older (in a few year’s time).
- Pocket Landship -
Ugh. This well-loved print-and-play game caught my eye when the published version went up for preorder. I had been intending to PnP my own copy but thought, “ooh, a lovely production quality game instead!” so I put it in my cart. I really shouldn’t have. The cardstock is awful; I literally could have made better cards myself. <sigh> I have played it once solo and… well, it’s quite nice if you can get past the high degree of input randomness (output randomness is extremely low, which is what makes it worthwhile in my book)
- Firefly Flux Upgrade Pack -
Flux… it’s not great. But Star Flux and Firefly Flux are two of our favorite; they’re not grand strategy games, but it’s a great lark for when your brain is fried from a long day and you just want something to do with your hands while having a quiet evening. This was a couple of bucks and got added into a larger order that already was on the free shipping threshold.
- Letter Tycoon -
Shortly after this arrived, I heard that BoardGameArena added this to their arsenal. Well… I guess I should have waited to try it there before shelling out money on a used copy. It wasn’t expensive and this has been on my want list for a long time. I still haven’t played it (either physically or via BGA), so I hope it lives up to my expectations of being an interesting layer of strategy atop a run-of-the-mill word game.
- Powergrid: The Robots -
My partner and I rather enjoy Power Grid, but it’s never been great as a 2-player game. I grabbed this hoping to make that viable, especially considering COVID. I’ve seen pretty mixed reception about the Robots, so it may have been a waste the ~$8 I spent on it… but it seemed worth the gamble.
- Carcassonne: Over Hill and Dale -
I like Carcassonne. I don’t love it, but I do like it. My neighbor has played a simplified version of Carcassonne with his ~7yo son, but I kept seeing a few Carc-variants that are well-regarded. Most of those variants are hard to come by, but Over Hill and Dale looks charming and has an interesting twist on the classic Carc ruleset
- Guilds of London -
I think I might be in danger of becoming a Tony Boydell fan. I think Snowdonia is equal parts genius and masterwork, so I decided to grab this on a deal-of-the-day offer to check it out.
- Sagrada: The Great Facades – Life -
This’ll be another small package for my partner to open on Christmas morning. We both enjoy Sagrada and she spent 15 or 20 seconds checking this out when we walked by it on the shelf at a Target (during COVID-19, a 20 second diversion in our shopping trip is dramatically divergent, especially with small children in tow)
- Mage Wars: (Arena) -
Like many others that I’ve seen comment on this game, I adore the idea of flipping through a “spellbook” looking for just the right Spell (card) for the situation at hand. And like many others, I’m really surprised this hasn’t been done more. I heard a rumor that Arcane Wonders may be looking to issue a slew of new products to “finish” the current Mage Wars Arena and Mage Wars Academy product lines and, potentially, judge the viability of a new line of Mage Wars products. So, in order to do some research into how much that might appeal to me, I grabbed a copy of Arena on the cheap from a BGG auction. I just wish the “spellbook” wasn’t cheap vinyl
- Blue Moon -
A small box with some big ideas and some grand fandom. It’s not a lot of content compared to everything that’s available, but it’s enough for my needs, unless it becomes an obsession (at which point I would feel compelled to buy all the things; I very much doubt it in this case)
- Noria -
After seeing some good things said about this both on this site and in some other places, I put a reasonable bid on a BGG auction and walked away with this (in same auction as Blue Moon, which brings the average shipping cost per game down considerably too). What a beautiful production with some really interesting ideas.
And that brings us up current through the end of September! We are quickly catching up on my backlog.
