Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
1450

My wife and I played a couple of games this afternoon. First up was Azul, which my wife won pretty easily, 69 - 55. I got nailed by 6 tiles on the floor in the last round, and took the first player token every round as well, which dragged my score down.

We followed it up with Splendor, which she also won handily, 17 - 10. She nabbed two nobkes to my zero, partly because the game would not stop putting out diamond mines, so I could not prevent her from getting enough for one of them.

Oh well, fun anyway.

3 Likes
1451

Finished that real life Too Many Bones run with my new girlfriend. We won against Drellen on day 7. This was by no means easy - if Drellen had survived another turn things would have gotten real dicey as Tantrum was down to just a couple HP and as Ghillie I no longer had my pet wolverine to tank for me. But Tantrum was up to five attack dice by that point and we’d whittled Drellen down to 3 HP (it helped that he wasn’t rolling well for defense) so, as it turns out, he did not. Also no other bog critters in the Baddie Queue to refresh his invulnerability, thankfully. She had fun and is up for trying again sometime, although we’ll be playing one of those Kosmos adventure game titles (Monochrome, Inc) first.

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1452

Finally got to play High Society today – firstly with 3 players, and later with 5. Everyone really enjoyed it (with one player immediately going in search of a copy to buy), and the superlative artwork (and very funny thematic overview text) of the Osprey edition really is the icing on the cake. I rarely enjoy auctions in games, but my gut told me that I was going to like this game, and I’m happy to confirm that my instincts were correct. Lovely stuff.

Also Geometric Art which everyone also enjoyed. The constraint of creating your picture using only the set of shapes determined by a bunch of custom dice is a delightful way to spark creativity. You might have two ovals, two curves, and a triangle in which to create a picture matching the category “a daily routine”, and the other players must correctly guess the name of your picture. This is the only game I’ve bought solely on account of the SUSD podcast, despite them saying they weren’t expecting to do a review. I’m glad I picked it up.

The next new game of the day for me was The Crew. I felt bad that I didn’t comprehend quite how lost one of the players was by the gameplay, and so they really didn’t enjoy it at all. They were new to trick-taking games generally, and I thought I’d explained well enough, but with hindsight there was some information overload, and I think we needed to have played some open-hand rounds with narration in order to clarify the concepts. Those of us who had played trick-taking games before had a better time, and I definitely enjoyed it – it can be a bit of a mind bender. In one of our failed missions I realised that of the remaining 6 tricks, the only one it was possible for me to lose was the one trick I needed to win – and with another player still needing to win one too. D’oh…

Karekare is a neat little hexagonal tile-laying game, where every combination of tile types has a particular effect. With 4 tile types (forest, field, hill, water) there are sixteen (4x4) possible actions resulting from playing a tile – and playing adjacent to multiple tiles means you get to do the appropriate action for each of those connections. I liked it rather than loved it, but I’d happily play it again.

Lastly, Solar Draft is a card game about building the best solar system. The artwork is delightfully silly, and added to the fun. It’s a pretty easy game to learn, but there’s a lot of text on the cards due to the sheer number of different planet/moon/comet types, and the end-game scoring takes a lot of effort on account of all the special scoring conditions depending on what other cards you had played into your solar system – which would be fine at the end of a multi-hour strategic marathon, but seemed a bit out of place in such a quick and simple game. We all enjoyed this as well, though.

4 Likes
1453

Scenario 13 of Jaws of the Lion still excellent. All of us are level 5 now, so next game the monsters need to go up as well. My Demolitionist now has the opportunity to have a ridiculous mech suit. Bosh!

We fluked this one. My eldest walked into the final room and hossed an attack 6, range 4 at the boss which should have spawned a lot of minions. He pulled a X2 and exploded said boss against the wall which turned it into a rout.

We’ve won every scenario so far and only 1 had us clinging on in the last turn. That felt the best even though I was out of it so we need to up the difficulty.

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1454

My wife and I just played Brass Birmingham. I’ve been inspired by the Brass PBP to get it to the table again. Definitely our favourite play so far. As we do in many games we played different strategies (she took 1 loan, I took 5 or 6), she had lots of canals and sold lots, I built lots of railways and breweries (that seems simpler than setting up sales). We drew, 136 points each.

BB is the most beautiful game I own (it’d be cool if the day and night sides had different set ups, or one side was a smaller, tighter map like with Concordia). It’s up there with Great Western Trail and Gloomhaven to be a pig to set up.

It’s an odd one, my feeling is that it becomes better as you get better at playing it which I think means that a lot of people may not have a great first couple of plays (I certainly didn’t). I think it will sing with 4 players who know what they’re doing, but that is going to take a while to happen. For now though I’d be keen to play it again soon and try something different.

6 Likes
1455

Had another game of Karekare today, unexpectedly. I think I enjoyed it a little more than yesterday, but it still falls under the “kinda neat, but not wow-ing me” banner.

One Deck Dungeon was next; another new game to everyone. We played with 4 players and it took too long for my liking, and I wasn’t excited by the puzzle of “how can we make all these dice results be the ones we actually need using combinations of special abilities”. I can imagine it being more fun for some than it was for me, and I might enjoy it better after another play, but I don’t feel very inspired to revisit it.

A few games of Hive and Fox in the Forest followed. I won all of these, but my opponent was pretty tired (and new to FITF), so not very surprising. I really should have lost one of the games of Hive but they made a single mistake in their would-be-endgame which gave me an additional turn, and I was able to drag it back for the win (eventually leaving them without enough moveable pieces to finish the job, after which I was free to move in and surround their queen bee). I felt a bit bad, but it was a pretty interesting game because of that one mistake, and I think it showed the game off well.

I then taught people China which was lovely as always.

Lastly we had a game of Century (Golem Edition) which I found pretty dull. Mostly we were silently staring at cards figuring out what to do next turn, and if I’m going to be doing that I want the gameplay to be more exciing than this. It wasn’t terrible, but I don’t have any interest in playing it again, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why it has an average rating as high as 7.7 (or 7.4 for the regular edition) on BGG (although Century did remind me a little of Splendor, a similarly highly-rated game that I similarly have no interest in ever playing again).

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1456

The app on solo (controlling two heroes) is perfect speed - I got it cheap to try out the game, and now I’m not sure I’d have patience for the physical version.

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1457

I’ve found both Splendor and Century to have the ‘quietly work on your own engine and compare scores at the end’. Interaction is limited to accidentally obtaining the card I was looking at getting on my next turn.

In other words, it suits a huge audience who find the idea of interaction by interference in a game horrifying which is possibly it has a high rating. The worker placement one in the trilogy has a Keyflower style placement and is much better for it IMHO.

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1458

Im pleasantly surprised that the Web of Power series still find itself on the table

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1459

Another Jaws of the Lion, with enemies at level 3. Really tense, my eldest heroically exhausted himself. My Demolitionist got to use a ridiculous, specific card to smash up tables. My wife and I had 2 turns left maximum when we finished. The youngest gets loads of cards so could have carried on for another fortnight!

Best scenario yet (15), so we’re halfway through the game IIRC. We’ve had a couple of either/ or scenarios already so it looks unlikely we’ll get the full 30 but it’s still a good game which will give us 25+ plays (if we win every scenario).

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1460

It’s such a good design. I always love introducing people to it. With the recent Iwari being popular on Kickstarter, I figure the series will continue to find its way to lots of tables for many years to come.

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1461

Last night my wife and I played Arboretum. Apparently I am destined to be shut out this weekend, as she trounced me, 25 - 15. I started off with Cherry Blossoms, and it turned out she had been dealt a couple of big ones at the start and held on to them until she was certain I would not be able to score them. I did great with Willows and managed to get Jacarandas as well and shut her out of Oaks, but she took Blue Spruce, Maple which combined with her win on the Cherry Blossoms put her way over my score.

Planning to continue our Imperial Assault Hoth app campaign tonight if the day doesn’t turn to s**t. We were going to play last night, but…

6 Likes
1462

Played Marvel Champions trying out the Red Skull campaign for the first time. Hawkeye Leadership and Spider-Woman Aggression/Justice against Crossbones.

I was trying to defeat him before he could resolve any main schemes and I missed that by one action, where I’d left Crossbones confused and only one of my heroes as alter-ego, but he then got a surprise extra scheme and surge, and the surge card was an Advance (scheme again). And he drew a 3-boost for at least one of those schemes. So it blew through my threat limit (even after putting the Justice van on for an extra 4 max threat). As soon as the Villain phase finished Hawkeye shot the pants off him and we won, but just too late.

Spider-Woman is brilliant, her own cards are very powerful (stuns, confuses, self-heals) and she has two support cards for free resources to spend on “an aspect card” which is basically all of them.
Surveillance Van and Beat Cop also doing a lot of heavy lifting in the Justice deck.

Kate Bishop as an ally gets a mention for doing damage equal to the cost of a card you discard and not taking consequential damage for doing it. Got a 5-cost ally you can’t possibly spend on this turn? Turn him into pain-free damage! Also the character deserves her own tv show and I’ve no doubt she’ll get a hero deck when that happens. (Kate Bishop is great in Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye and G+M’s Young Avengers, and the Kelly Thompson run).

I hadn’t played in a while and I was surprised at how much thinking there is to do right from the first turn. The actions are quite simple, but there’s always 3-4 ways you can play any hand (changing which cards you use and which you pay with) and every choice matters. Still a very satisfying game.

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1463

I quite often deliberately take the card my opponent was saving for

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1464

Which is indeed the correct way. However some groups I’ve played in are horrified when I do it.

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1465

A rare event for me last night, as I decided to bring a few games with me for a trip away with friends to see if they wanted to play anything. We started with a few hands of the print and play version of Love Letter, and followed that with a game of Carcassonne, both of which at I time I thought were not that well received. Certainly, the others seemed to enjoy playing another person’s game as the comic value of Rapidough appealled to them more. However this morning, one of the group asked me more about games and we got chatting to other titles she might like or had played in the past. I left her my copy of Pandemic to try (at least solo) and she showed interest in other titles even including Eldritch Horror and Viticulture. Maybe I might have found someone to play games occasionally, and at the very least we may get a few party/family titles on the table this Christmas.

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1466

Had a chilled out bank holiday Sunday here today, some nice afternoon family gaming. We played Carcassonne first, I came home in last place, utterly trounced.

Then had a game of Jamaica, which was good fun. Lots of battles in it this time, and apparently stealing the hard won gold from your poor Dad’s ship is acceptable behaviour for the youth of today… tsk tsk.

Anyone ever try the expansion for Jamaica? (Jamaica: The Crew). Wondering if it adds much to it.

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1467

Did another session of Kingdom Death: Monster, this time encompassing Lantern Year 2. We rolled very poorly on a couple of settlement rolls and lost two population to a 1 on the Intimacy chart, but we did expand the settlement and innovate a couple times, so that was neat. Then we hunted a Screaming Antelope and not only didn’t have anyone die but didn’t actually take very much damage in general what with it running around like crazy more than actually attacking and a bunch of bonuses giving us survival to mitigate nasty hits. Actually, our closest brush with death there was rolling like shit on a Bug Patch and having a survivor with no insanity (the only one) take 3 brain damage.

I think I begin to see what you mean about it being possible to get strong enough not to have all that many problems, although in fairness we would still have a hard time with a level 2 monster at the moment, I think.

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1468

Jaws of the Lion, faced off against zealots and Chaos demons. Unfortunately, we did not survive. We actually called it before the end, with one player dead, and the others low on health - and we hadn’t even reached the final room (with the boss). Our second loss in a row. But we will be back!

My City, episodes 13, 14 and 15. I did better than a normally did, with two second places. Wont give the details (spoilers). Went fairly smoothly.

Viscounts of the West Kingdom, first play. Yet another game in the XXX of the West Kingdoms games (Architects, Paladins). The board is made up of five segments, held together by a castle with three rings. You start with your own deck of eight townsfolk, but will hire and use more.

On your turn, you will add a new card from your hand to your player board (which holds 3 cards). The rightmost card will be discarded. Cards have three types of actions: immediate (when you first play them), on going, or discard.
Then you’ll move your Viscount around the main board. The board has spaces on the outer and inner paths, and you’ll get different options depending on which path you take. Your movement is taken from the cost of the new card you added to your board (so a card with a value of 2 allows you to move 2). You can move further by adding money.
After movement, you take one of four main actions, each with its own required icon. You can add up the icons from your player board, and can dismiss the townsfolk card on the main board next to you to add more icons. You can also add resources to give you more icons.
The main actions are trade, construct a building, place workers, and transcribe a manuscript.
Trade can give you resources, the ability to destroy a card (to thin your deck), or flip debt/deed cards.
Construct a building allows you to build one of three types of building, giving you an ongoing ability, or a permanent icon. And VPs at the end of the game.
Place workers allow you to move your workers onto the castle in the middle of the main board. If you have three workers in one section of the first (outer) tier, then one of them moves up to the next tier, while each of the others move to the left and right sections. This could also trigger another group of three workers. You get an action by moving into the second tier, and a free resource by moving into the third tier. VPs are also given at the end of the game. If there are more than three workers (of any colour) in a first or second tier, then any extra can be sent back to the player who owns them. It sounds a little complicated, but it works smoothly enough.
Finally, you can transcribe a manuscript, which allows you to take the top manuscript adjacent to you. You get something free when you take it, and the colour of the manuscript ribbon lets you make sets for VPs at the end of the game.
Theres an interesting mechanic with the virtue and corruptions markers. They start on each side of your player board. If you gain corruption, that marker moves to the right, where the virtue marker moves to the left. If they collide, then you get a reward, and so do the other players. Corruption gives you more money, but also debt cards.
Debt cards are worth negative VPs if you don’t manage to flip them. You also have deed cards, which give 1 VP, or 3 VPs if you can flip them. The decks of debt and deed cards determine the end of the game. You get VPs from having the most flipped cards.
It took a while to teach this (and it was my first game too, which doesn’t help). There was a bit of AP, as you try and decide which card to play, which affects how far you move, and what options you’ll get. It took a couple of hours to play, next game should be a bit quicker. Some rules seem a bit weird, like when you destroy a card, it has to be from your hand, or you can draw your next card from your deck. Most games allow you to go thru your discards to destroy one. I went after the manuscripts for points, and another player had heaps of workers in the castle. We ended up with the same score, but the tie breaker was left over resources and money, which I lost.

Red 7 to finish things off. I like the game myself, but one of the other players didn’t really enjoy it. There are some people who just never get how the game works.

2 Likes
1469

Got most of the way through the 4th Hoth campaign mission in the Imperial Assault Legends of the Alliance app tonight. Unfortunately it was getting late, so we took pictures and saved the app and will pick up where we left off another evening.

Not sure how I am feeling about the Hoth campaign, to be honest. While the missions do try out new things in comparison to the original app campaign, they mostly seem designed to slow down the Rebels, which then allows the time taken to cause perils to damage or otherwise inconvenience the players, and that just isn’t…well, fun. Especially when you add in the time needed to dig out the map tiles as they come up every time you open a door, grinding the game to a halt for a minute each time. Admittedly, a better sorting system than what I have (all pieces tossed in the box by size) would help some.

I wish they would just list all the tiles you need for the mission in the introductory bit, as it would save a ton of time. I could see tapping through all the missions once I have played them and making a note of all the tiles needed for each just so future plays can go a bit smoother.

I am curious how the Jabba’s Realm campaign is. I have heard it is the best of the three, and am truly hoping it does not expand upon the delaying tactics involved in Hoth.

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