Recent Boardgames (Your Last Played Game Volume 2)

Boardgames
3666

I just got finished introducing my partner to Sheepy Time, which I’m happy to report isn’t a total dud at 2P. There’s no question in my mind that 4 players is ideal, but the pressure from the nightmare is scaled for the player count, and there’s still enough player-dependent combo interactions to keep the wilder bits of the race interesting (if swingier).

We went into a 5th heat after a nearly instantaneous double-bust in race 4, but I’m glad it happened as it facilitated one hell of a finale. In the final race, I needed 10 points to win, while my partner needed 15. I cleared my first lap, dumped a card for 3 winks (points) and then lapped-and-bailed to close out at 13 points—enough to force the end game, with a little buffer.

Well doesn’t my partner go on to have an insane run (while under added last-sheep-standing pressure, mind), lapping almost three times and netting 13 points at the line. She had the card she needed to get that third lap (for 18 points which would have secured a tiebreaker victory for her), but drew three nightmare cards in a row and busted out.

Great fun again, and I can’t wait to get my folks to try it.

[EDIT] More fun with The Fuzzies which is a bonafide smash hit already. We played three games across about an hour, with the first epic game alone taking up about half that. My partner won the first game, closing out the first best-of-three we started yesterday, and then I managed to win the next two in a row, quickly closing out the second. And thus, a rivalry is born. Man this is a wonderful game.

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3667

Had a work party yesterday. Usually we have a dinner at a mid-range restaurant (Montanas, Jack Astor, The Beer Market, those kinda places), but due to the 'Vid, the bosses decided to host an outdoor event at one of their homes. It’s a beautiful backyard with a pool and some nice tents (just the roofs of the tents, I don’t know what you call that, but for shade) and some hammocks… oh, and a fully stocked bar section with a tv and washroom and a massive BBQ. It was a nice space!

But it was also pretty hot (29C), and I don’t swim and I don’t like wearing shorts (I have body image issues), so it was hot. But that’s okay! It was nice, but exhausting, to hang out with my colleagues in a social way for a few hours (1pm until 6pm, basically).

And, bringing us finally to “the point”… we played games!
First up was a ridiculous game of Jungle Speed, which remains one of my favourite grab-and-go party games. 4 players this time (both of the boss’s wives, my partner and myself), and Natalie won handily. Great reaction time on that one, although she did occasionally grab prematurely.

After that we played a riotous game of Anomia, 5 players this time (added a colleague’s wife to the mix), and my partner managed to win that, although it was pretty close! Good times… the 5th player, Liz, had so much fun that I ended up giving her my copy of Anomia since I had an extra.

Lastly, we played a game of Wavelength, just a short quick one, but I managed to rope 8 players into it. Highlight was Maverick, one of my colleagues, getting the scale “Friend to Enemy”, and then looking another colleague straight in the eyes and saying his name (“Mike”). The final correct position? Directly between the two.

Ah-mazing.

Good times had. Taught some of my coworkers a few games, ate some delicious pizza (ordered from my 2 favourite pizza joints in town, one that does pan-style pizzas really well, and the other does spectacular thin crust), didn’t say anything that I think will get me fired.

We’re calling that a win.

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3668

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Sometimes a win in Hardback can happen quite suddenly. This was a very satisfying word (for 19 :star: and 2 c). The Doppler Effect is quite something… even I was surprised I ended the turn with 60 points.

We’re still playing without literary awards. Because. Those just always decide the game. Of course getting all the red cards does the same thing. But it is at first more subtle and then more sudden. I have now played one of my 2 nerdy word friends 12 times and the other 16 times. Not stopping any time soon it seems :slight_smile:

In a weird twist, while I am winning against the one friend in Hardback I am losing against him in Tash Kalar and when I am winning in Tash Kalar I am losing Hardback. Apparently, the games do not play nice with each other in my brain.

PS: all the colors have very valid strategies, just this time it was red :smiley: which I love best of them all.

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3669

You might call it a “grab-and-go-and-go-and-grab” game, even.

Sounds like an excellent time was had by all!

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3670

Got in a game of Indonesia this weekend which is always a treat. For the first time in a long time I played mostly a good game of something but the win was snatched away from me by one opponent throwing money and position at the other. Like handing them a complete monopoly on rubber 2 turns before the end :man_shrugging:. However the game was fun and the mergers were often pretty delicious. I’m going off auctions in games but these auctions are probably my favourite of any in a game.

I managed a strong position in Siap Faji early which I maintained well and was maybe my first time pulling that off so I was pleased with that.

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3671

A Regicide gold victory. The reason my hand of cards isn’t in the photo is that I’d used every single one of them to eke out the required damage for the win. And the reason there’s no discard pile visible is that there weren’t any injured heroes at all – that combo of 5s had healed up the last of them! This was so satisfying that I had to take a photo.

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The final two kings were clubs and diamonds (which meant that even with exact damage on the king of clubs, I wouldn’t be able to get it into my hand). I was in a position to draw up to a full hand by overkilling the king of clubs with my only diamond (which was fine, seeing as an exact kill was of no benefit), but the cards I drew would comprise my only chance at the gold victory, and at first glance they didn’t seem enough; so I just started playing the hand, assuming I’d need one of my jesters…

It was only after I’d negated the king’s counter-attacks with my first 20 points on attack (having discarded two of my eight cards to absorb 10 damage after the first play) that I realised I actually could do precisely 20 more with my three remaining cards, and get the win!

I was particularly pleased by this, right up until I was writing this report, and wondered (as you yourself may have) why on earth I hadn’t played the ace of clubs with the jack of spades?! The outcome seemed slightly less satisfying after noticing that blunder : ) but still – a win is a win!

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3672

On Monday @lalunaverde, @Captbnut, and I played Oath on TTS with a couple of people from my old gaming group. Since I have zero ability to write stories, I doodled a chronicle entry instead:

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I won’t let on who was who :laughing:

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3673

That’s gorgeous! : )

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Looks great. I prefer the doodle approach to the book. Nice work!

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3675

Oh, wow… I was really confused as to how this was a victory, so I read the rules again and discovered that Spades provide cumulative damage prevention, which I never realized. That might actually make this game winnable for me, so, both figuratively and literally, thanks for showing me how it’s done!

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3676

Non-zero ability to draw! That stuff you people call doodling… is not. Does anyone want to see my meeting doodles? Right, I thought not :stuck_out_tongue: I am not even in the same sport :smiley: Let alone league. What is up with the Mushroom Dreams though?

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3677

I had made the same mistake until I was following the PBF here and realized it. So you are not alone!

3678

Everyone was too busy having visions (which may or may not have been induced by hallucinogenic mushrooms) to notice that the red player was going to win :grin:

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3679

I’m not sure, and it’s me that’s having them! @Whistle_Pig did have mushrooms for tea iirc

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3680

Tofu with “black fungus” and about a whole bulb of garlic. It was delicious :slight_smile:

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3681

I was able to squeak in a solo game vs. the bot in The Search for Planet X this afternoon, and lost 18-21. I want to give myself a little leeway here as I made a (solitaire-specific) app error on the first peer review, and revealed some information by mistake. I chose to ignore it and keep my honour in tact rather than logging it and playing through, which of course the bot did NOT extend to me.

Anyway, I had located hard information about the two comets on my first survey, and had followed the leads regarding the space between them (#6) throughout the game. I had a bunch of hints regarding space #2, but my information was too imperfect to call it trustworthy. Well, wouldn’t you know the bot caught me totally off guard when the game announced it had located Planet X.

It’s a funny thing sometimes, when you’re pressed to make a decision and the best one is “too right” to pick. That little itch in my brain telling me there was no way my hunch from turn #1 was going to be correct was persistent, and annoying, and of course I listened and of course I left 8 points (and the win) on the table!

What an amazing, amazing logic game. I’m super excited to show this one to my partner.

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3682

Met @lalunaverde and one other for a game of The Great Zimbabwe. For the first time in many a month I won a game! (Also did an assignment quickly and got a good score, so my recovery might be keeping on)

Game was fun. LLV and the other both jumped on gods early, Elegua of 3 free bidding cattle and Obatala of place 2 monuments on a turn instead of 1. I snaffled the Herd early and had a slow start. The board had a really big lake that made the environment resource rich in ranges. An ivory carver got deployed early at 1 cost so lots of monuments grew early, before expensive throne makers appeared. Mid ranged pottery went out followed quickly by the level 2. We had a delay before the wood maker appeared which got a round at 3 price before I plonked out a level 2 wood maker and picked a late god and ran Anansi hard in an expensive market.

This tipped me over in the last round where I could bid 16 cattle to guarantee first in a single bid and keep enough to pay all my upgrades for the winning 12 point turn. Cheekily done with a hub to an out of the way monument which gave me access to resources that weren’t used in the game so kind of got forgotten about.

Enjoyed the game a lot(I won, obvs). Having not played in a while there was an agreeable level of rustiness around the table. It’s not a game I’ve ever felt good at so it was nice to sort of start again.

We finished off with 2 hands of Kreus. It’s not quite Hanabi but it does a good job of changing up no communication coops. Marvelous.

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3683

Played Orleans with my wife tonight. Despite being tired and distracted, she still beat the pants off me, 131 - 109.

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3684

Mostly games online:

Yeah TGZ and Kreuz are very fun. Still my fave Splotter. But this is like ranking your different fave ice cream flavour. The difference is minute in the end when I compare TGZ, Indonesia, FCM with 99.9% of games I have played.

Finally played Ankh. It is very weird. It is strangely strategic - completely unexpected - but I am not sure how the game operates with its strategic avenues - this will manifest upon repeated plays. The dynamic regions is interesting. You can carve new regions at some points of the game.

There are bits that I don’t like. What I am most certain of is the action selection - you choose one or two actions. If you choose a 2nd action, it has to be beneath your 1st action. And when you reached the last space, you can claim a neutral monument. However, in order to do this, a player upstream must push the action just before the end for you to claim it. I don’t think I liked that left-right binding. Plus, when you consider how enemy monuments cannot be taken if there are still neutral monuments around, the effect of the left-right binding increases.

I remain nonplussed about the merging, except that I think that it’s a bold decision from Eric Lang. Sometimes, when you try something risky, it backfires - e.g. Tapestry’s unequal turns. Yeah, Ankh is a very bold and interesting design!

1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties - I am getting a bit meh with this as I play it more. Maybe because either I play with newbies trying to internalise the game like I do. I don’t know. Who knows? But one thing is that the train rush isn’t quick enough for my taste. Even on “short mode” that has fewer trains in the deck.

What is a train rush - when you buy trains from the open deck, you buy first from the top, consisting of low tech trains and people collectively buy their way through the deck to reach the high tech ones at the bottom. But some of the trains will “rust” the old trains. Buying a 4 Train will force all players to discard all 2 Trains immediately. 6 Trains will force discard 3’s. And so on.

In 1862, if you’re screwed with your failing company, you can simply sell ALL shares and abandon the company to Receivership. You won’t be left holding the bags, so to speak. So there’s little tension in regards to the rush. And then I joined a 6 player game of 1862. It was fine at first, but then the train rush was significantly faster, to the point that I have considered buying “guarantees” (a guarantee to run a train at least once regardless) and also end up slashing my shares down to half to flush in money to the company. Which I have never done before.

Very interesting. I’ll try to play it more online with 5 or 6 players.

1817 - I still get my behind handed to me. I still go bankrupt. I need a complete rethink on how I play because I always don’t end up on the late game with a company that is still powering ahead.

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3685

More solitaire The Search for Planet X this morning, and I logged a pretty decisive win. I missed out on 8 points when my final guess was off (the bot found it first again, and I made a late game marking error regarding gas clouds), but still managed to win 26-18. I think it’s fair to say I can take it off beginner mode; the bot seems to be proficient as a timer at this level but not much else. What a great way to get the gears moving in the morning.

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