Yesterday had sunshine, almost no wind and outdoor games after the morning rain, which was most fortunate.
Meeting @lalunaverde and others we started with a game of Noria which was excellent. After a teach and setup the game flew but in 90 entertaining minutes of cutthroat positing and wheel turning. Such a great game. I was a bit off the pace and missed all my goals by a turn and/or a resource. Sad times.
Next up was Expedition: Northwest Passage which is always worth a play even if it’s not as good as Noria. The main selling point with this one is a rather unique feel. There’s a tile laying element, as you explore the Arctic, to create the routes from Greenland to the northwest passage while searching for clues of Franklin’s expedition. The whole thing is action point allowance powered. The uniqueness comes from the race, the tile lying and the action points blending in their own way but it’s topped off by the sun that circles the board. It’s half and half warm and cold so there’s a shift through out the game of wether the water is frozen or not in any particular region which feels nicely thematic and adds an interesting timing element to the game. A very thematic euro indeed.
Expedition: Northwest Passage - really enjoyed this. The coop-etition where we race to the North Western Passage is fun, and the freezing waters is too. I’d very much rather play this than Isle of Skye, which I also like, but is becoming easily calculable to me.
6Nimmt!
I also met a friend on Sat and played Summoner Wars 1st ed. I can’t stop fanboying over this game. You can’t make me do a reasonable take on this game. However, I can say that the 2nd edition rules are very very good.
Then, we played War of the Ring 2nd ed. I played as the Free Peoples again. The Sauron player went for a Northern strategy planning to knock out the Northmen, the Dwarves, and the Elves. But Sauron was too focused on the war that the Fellowship literally strolled into Mordor, the Fellowship proceed to pull jokes on Boromir. During the journey, Gandalf died (oh no!) but showed up in Fangorn and went to Gondor to rally the kingdom to their side, he was then followed by Strider who was latter crowned as Aragorn. Gimli went to Ered Luin to rally the Dwarves to war.
Sauron’s massive armies then ravaged the Northmen’s realms. The Shire and Ered Luin were sacked, but Gimli retreated to the Grey Havens before they were crushed. The Grey Havens were then put under siege. Erebor fell into darkness.
The climb to the top of Mount Doom was a different story for the remnants of the Fellowship. One by one they died under Sauron’s corruption. Boromir first, then Legolas, and then Pippin. Only Merry, Sam, and Frodo were the only ones remaining when they met Aragorn and Gandalf again.
It’s not official, but the Death Star look is why we chose it.
I can’t remember where we got it from - playmats were discussed on here about a year ago and it’s the most common one you can get in the UK - the brand that someone else mentioned (it might be Ulimate Guard)! Its 90cmx90cm which is bigger than standard because we wanted it for a whole game, not just a tableau.
Had our first go playing with the Russians in Memoir '44.
“I have to choose my card for my next turn now?”
“I have to make that decision before we even resolve my actions on this turn?”
“I only have 3 command cards to choose from?”
No wonder the Russians had a hard time. My partner won, but I still had a great time.
After listening to the latest SVWAG podcast, I decided I should try out the scripted TTS mod for Fantasy Realms they mentioned. Fantasy Realms as you may remember is nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres. You may also remember that it inspired Jamey Stegmaier to make a game about some of his favorite books: Red Rising.
While not a huge fan of Stonemaier games, I was among those who preordered Red Rising because I like the IP and the game features Mars. I didn’t have huge expectations and a first game with my partner quickly proved that the game has a few issues with luck and top-decking. For the record: I enjoyed my solos of Red Rising.
So to compare both games, I played Fantasy Realms 4 times against 2 scripted opponents.
Both games are about the same thing: you get an initial hand of cards, all of these cards are unique. Cards score points in combination with each other and your basic turn is to take a card and “discard” a card to improve your hand. In the case of Red Rising, you do not discard the card but play it to one of four locations that give you other bonuses and playing a card may also give you bonuses and cards block access to other cards that were played to that location earlier.
In Fantasy Realms the game ends after about 5-8 exchanges per player: the discard display can only hold a fixed number of cards, game ends as soon as that is full. So if you start with a good hand, you just watch the others struggle for cards to improve their lot. If you start with a bad hand… it’s a lottery. In both games that deck is pretty big and the probability of drawing the right card from the deck… small. Both games mitigate this by including a number of jokers but in Fantasy Realms the jokers do not usually score any points themselves. In Red Rising there are whole suits of jokers and they do score. The scoring issues in RR are more about how little variance there is and how a huge hand definitely scores more points so cards that allow that extra draw become so much more valuable. Hand size is fixed in Fantasy Realms. SVWAG mentions that scoring for Fantasy Realms takes longer than playing the game–this is true, luckily the TTS mod scores for you. But the issue extends to grokking your hand (a little less an issue with RR but still exists). Some of these cards aren’t trivial in their effects on your hand and the manual doesn’t do much to clear up how they work.
I am unimpressed with Fantasy Realms to say the least and how this game made it to the Kennerspiel list is a mystery to me. 2020 really wasn’t a bad year for games.
I really like Red Rising better now after having played Fantasy Realms. At the size where my collection currently seems to be staying, I plan to keep Red Rising in my collection because a) it is pretty and b) it has Mars and c) the gameplay is unique in my collection. Would I buy it again? Probably not. But I will most definitely not be buying Fantasy Realms.
I’m confused because I played it at Essen in 2017! I mean, sure, new edition, new publisher, I think it’s just been translated into German, but it doesn’t feel like a “new game” to me…
It is not. It is just the weird “has to have a German version” thing.
They could have had Hallertau, Oceans, Nidavellir, Brass Birmingham (yes, DE version was 2020), Viscounts of the West Kingdom, Anno 1800, Renature, Coatl… --BGG sadly has no language search. But those are just a few of the really great games that were published in 2020. Maybe some of these are like Arnak beyond Kennerspiel…
Dune: Imperium, Beyond the Sun, The King is Dead 2nd and quite a few others are only getting German versions in 2021. So I have hopes for BtS for the next round… and if Arnak doesn’t win, then Dune may get a shot…
Looking at games from 2020 now, if I had to nominate for Kennerspiel, I would have gone with Oceans, Renature and Nidavellir. Not saying these are my personal favorites (I haven’t even played Oceans). I just think they make good Kennerspiel material.
I feel that every year Spiel de Jarhes becomes less significant to hobby boardgamers – to the point that it’s practically without value to people who already visit BGG more than once or twice a month.
I’m probably one of the people who still look at SDJ and try out the winner and nominees, and ignore Kennerspiel. But since last year, it looks like the type of games that are usually in SDJ are now showing up in Kennerspiel. I was expecting The Crew to be an SDJ material.
I ended up going the opposite way on red rising. That game felt like the last twenty mins of the game was just trying to sustain a decent position and very rarely did it feel that thrilling to me. Whereas you can probably finish two games of FR in the mean time. In the context that both games are limited a lot by the opening hands id prefer the one that’s easier to take to a pub.
We did try scoring once in fantasy realms using a pencil (I think the score pad in Red Rising is kind of deficient too - it needs More room for cards but is hampered because it could be unlimited in cards) but quickly went to the app which is really useful.
We played some of this beta penguins drawing game on board game arena. It’s a bit of a rip off of one of the jackbox games (maybe drawful) but the issue is you can see the lions share of the Labour (and therefore the fun) of these games is actually in drafting fun clues that create ambiguity and amusement rather than the mechanisms. An interesting case study but kind of boring otherwise.
(I will say we did have fun but some of these were distinctly laughing at failures rather than laughing at doing an impossible task)
Last night, I tried out Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch against Ultron in Marvel Champions, to rather disastrous results. Never really got an engine going, like I do with most of the heroes I have tried, partially due to losing cards to drones, but also just feeling I needed to prioritize attacks/thwarts over upgrades because I was on the back foot.
Got overwhelmed with drones when a couple of side schemes came out. Quicksilver was helpful in taking them out, able to hit two with basic attacks due to his ability, and then the Double Take card which could then hit two more. Scarlet Witch’s Hex Bolt was also helpful, but the randomness of it meant I couldn’t rely on it to clear out drones.
Will try again at some point, as hopefully the familiarity I gained with the decks during play will help. Also of note is that this play means I have played more games from my 2021 challenge in one week than I did in the entirety of May, and am tied for April. I hope I can keep up this momentum, as I am just under a third of the plays needed to complete the challenge, but almost halfway through the year.
Ooh, I hadn’t thought of that. Quicksilver is so reliant on Friction Resistance that the chances of losing it to a Drone and having to cycle the deck before you (maybe?) get it back is pretty horrible!
Yeah, I had it in my hand once, but did not get it out as it was too important at the time to remove some threat, I think (had two side schemes active). While I did have the card that let me reshuffle Quicksilver cards back into the deck, I never saw Friction Resistance again. Would have been very helpful.
I actually played multiple games that aren’t Marvel Champions, which is pretty unusual for me…
Paper Tales: I adore this game after just a couple plays, but my partner is pretty ice-cold on it. She generally hates games that are highly regimented (do this step, then this step, etc.), so that’s to be expected. I’m a proud sucker for any fast, component-minimal card game, though, so I’ll have to track down the solo mode in the expansion.
Regicide: I played a few using the official solo variant on BGG and one of my recently purchased 54-card decks, and I’m of two minds on it. On one hand, I’ve played three games and discovered new tactics and subtleties with each play, which is pretty phenomenal for a game played with a deck of cards. On the other hand, the game is very repetitive, and each game furthered the sense that I don’t have much control over the outcome; if you don’t get diamonds in hand at the right time, you’re going to lose. I think this would be a smaller issue with multiple players, but I don’t play games with other players, so we’ll never know.
Spirit Island: Played a learning game at the local board game cafe. This game ticks absolutely all of my boxes, but after one game I’m not sure if I want to dive into it. There are so many lovely decision points and interestingly interlocked mechanisms and thematic considerations at play, but with a single spirit these all felt woefully restrained, and I’m never a big fan of two-handed solo. I also felt that the endgame was pretty anticlimactic; I didn’t even realize I was about to win until I looked at the board and realized it just happened. That could just be a function of me not having a good grasp on the rules and board state, though. Interested to try this again for sure, but not moved to immediately buy it.
Played a quick solo game of The Bloody Inn last night. Didn’t go so well. The first round through the guest deck only had me kill one guest, though I did manage to take over two of the rooms which helped my income a bit, but I only had about 50 francs in cheques at the end of it.
Second round went much better and I managed to get a final score of 148, but that’s still low in my estimation (only a Dangerous Innkeeper? Someday I’ll be Demonic…). There were a lot of police in the deck (as you remove 26 cards when playing the long solo game), and lots of purple, but not a lot of blue, which helps when bribing. And due to the excess of police, I pretty much always needed to make sure I could bury any bodies before the end of the next round, or murder the police guests so they couldn’t investigate, which could be tricky if more than one showed up.
Fun little game. I wish it would come to the table in a multiplayer environment more often.
We had my eldest daughter birthday yesterday, and she wanted to learn her new game rules (Fort), so even though we had little time, we played a couple of turns. Still unsure of a couple of things with played cards and discard dynamics, so I think I will watch a how to play video before we give it another go.
