So The Great Zimbabwe was discussed about a month past? I got Boardlandia to do a price match with Gamenerdz, then they have 10% off right now (auto in cart). $81 free shipping if you are in the states.
Splotter is always a big line item but this is likely about as good as you’ll ever do.
Sounds cheaper than the copy I ordered from Splotter in September 2020 and haven’t received yet!
I’m about halfway through a learning game of Kemet, playing two-handed to come to grips with the rules. This isn’t a game to “play each side” with thanks to the cardplay shenanigans, but it’s doing the job for the task at hand. It’s incredible to me that after almost a decade and several revisions, they managed to fart out this travesty of a rulebook.
Anyway, thankfully there’s nothing wrong with the actual rules or the associated gameplay, and I’m having a fun time duking it out (between BGG threads, files and errata) and desperately trying to keep up on those sweet square victory tokens. It’s an aggressive game, which I really appreciate, particularly since things boil down to how badly you want to win a given combat versus how badly you need to survive, so smart defense is still a big consideration.
I can only guess about the cardplay, but I’m intrigued and excited by it. With no real way to simulate the blind reveal dynamic I’ve just been kind of fudging it based on the cards available, and how hard each side would be willing to fight in a given combat encounter. Hardly ideal, but at least I’m getting something more out of it than from a simple blind draw approach (which would at least provide the a-ha/oh-no moments).
I know a few folks who will want to dig into this at least a little. Hopefully I can arrange a big game soon.
FWIW, I found the PP2e bot more palatable after I read that it is supposed to stand in for not one, but effectively two AI opponents, merged into one for simplicity and speed. So it can change the game state as much as two opponents would, and sometimes boosts both of the factions you are not aligned with instead of only one. It’s taking a different tack to one vs. one bots.
We starting playing some Spoopy-themed games (mostly)
Broom Service - I am still THE Brave Forest Witch
Through the Ages - played it 4 players with 2 newbies. It can get slow with AP players, but I still like how big the decisions are.
Poison aka Friday the 13th - another Knizia card game. We have the old edition of Poison with the useless but pretty big cauldron to create potions on. They are nice and I didn’t mind them.
I tried grabbing cards to create majorities on 1 or 2 colours, rather than playing cautiously and reduce the number of cards taken. Majorities on each of the 3 colour of cards, will be discarded and won’t count as penalty pts to you. Hence, why I am eager to take them. Unfortunately, I was often short on one majority so I end up taking more pts. “Git gud” as the kids say nowadays. I think I prefer this over Parade by Z-Man. But I will still eagerly play Parade . Poison or Friday the 13th is way simple and a bit more clever than the latter.
Another game of Broom Service and I am still the Brave Forest Witch. This time, my long term goal of reaching the far end of the map was a success but people intentionally screwed over my last round and lost by 4 pts. Scoundrels!! That’s what they are!
There is a significant amount of chaos, but I think you can have a good degree of information to make deductions on guessing what people might pick as their actions for that round, and also have enough control to make long term plans. I am both impressed with what I saw, and also a bit concern on how much game I get to play until I find myself in a routine of doing the same thing again and again
Rallyman and Rallyman GT to get my ISGOYTRA entries done. (It really annoys the ISGOYTRA admin if you put them in on the last day.)
Merkator which we talked about in the latest podcast – and while I’m never going to be a dry Euro fan I really appreciated the shifting puzzliness of it all.
Some more BGA tonight. Started with Beyond the Sun. I swear I’m getting even worse! I really struggle with the tempo of this game. It feels like you should be making bigger and bigger moves to finish in a crescendo, but I often find I limp over the line having achieved bugger all for 4 turns.
Had a game of Lama. This really doesn’t have much of a game to it, but is still good fun.
Finished with a first play for a while of Nidavellir. A hidden auction set collection game. The dwarf theme isn’t my bag, but there’s a lot to like in this game. I think the scoring irl would be an absolute pig, but it’s decent enough for a quick blast online.
Played Rising Sun this evening with 5. I much preferred it to playing with 3 - there was much more contention for control of the board. We also played with the Kami expansion, which changed the game quite a bit.
The owner had done a really good job with painting the minis, including adding glue “slime” to one of the monsters:
Played a game of Free Ride recently (my box says Frei Fahrt). It feels at first a lot like TransAmerica (everyone puts pieces on the board to make train routes which become available to everyone) but has a route planning aspect where you have to move a train around between spots.
The game feels extremely tight (the solo mode has a crap performance to top performance score with a score range of 225-250) so I think the game is very mathy to play it well. Also I think the game would benefit with 3+ Players. Some decisions can lead to a six point swing in 2p which feels like a lot after playing it.
Interesting! I like TransAmerica/TransEuropa. Will check this one out
So, New Frontiers. It’s the Race for the Galaxy Board Game where Lehmann finally goes full Puerto Rico.
I’d been eager for a Puerto Rico killer. The game and I have a lukewarm history, but back in 2000 when half the internet was geocities and Settlers was fresh off the BGG #1 throne, you played a lot of Puerto. It’s just what you did. I never loved it, but I remain pretty attached simply due to time spent together (and memory of the sessions and people that came with it).
New Frontiers does fix every single thing wrong with Puerto Rico, which is great. On a first play, though, I found it also failed to duplicate the things that Puerto did right, and I was left with TWO boxes on my shelf, two sides of an imperfect coin (side note: oddly, I found that Bruxelles 1897 was a much more effective Puerto Rico killer despite the complete lack of mechanical overlap. The competitive and decision space felt very similar).
When New Frontiers popped up on BGA beta out of nowhere, I started playing it pretty compulsively and each time I love it more. I’m four games in now and it’s really showing it’s nuance. No, it doesn’t have the juicy “when do I produce?” question or the tense sparring over shipping space, nor the long term planning of where to put limited “colonists” (cough, cough) to activate parts of your engine until the next Mayor phase. But it does have other areas of tension and interaction that I"m falling in love with.
Then, last night, I played it in person again with my sister-in-law. It was bland on the table. It felt like it ended too soon and plagued with too many obvious choices. I don’t know if that is an artifact of the 2-player game vs. 3 or 4, that she made it too easy on me by missing the action selection nuance, or that we were both tired at the back half of another long week?
Anyway, New Frontiers. 3-4 player asynch, I cannot get enough of it. 2 player on the table, twice disappointed. I’m going to stick with it until I can ferret out what makes it work, because when the game clicks I absolutely love it.
Puerto Rico: The Card Game: The Board Game
Lol.
Or Spaceballs: The Puerto Rico
Played Stephenson’s Rocket. I lost really, really badly.
It’s a funny game to play initially. Very little seems to happen and then suddenly loads goes on. Merging the trains is of great consequence, but we didn’t realise until the end of the game. The game ended in a bit of a rush.
I think it will get better with repeat plays as we understand it. It’s quite unusual, but the decisions towards the end really ramped up.
I’m going to learn Taverns of Tiefenthal tomorrow as a two player. Any tips?
So as promised to myself I played a “big” solo game tonight. This is my Paladins of the West Kingdom + City of Crowns board in its final glorious state. After about 2 hours spent on setting up and learning/relearning the rules, remembering why I hate the bot—despite good reminders on the bot side of the board, it really needs a helper sheet with reminders for the specifics of the actions. Over all the whole game is in desperate need of some player aids that go beyond the back of the rulebooks. This is one of those games where I keep going back to the rulebook all the time, every single game.
It’s a table hog. This is just a small part of the game. See here.
I feel inadequate at explaining this monstrosity (I like it, but that doesn’t change the fact that my partner goes running for the hills when the box comes out and he hates running). So shortest possible explanation: Over seven rounds you place your bunch of more or less randomly collected workers on the board in order to build walls, monasteries, camps and collect blue vases, convert strangers and hire townsfolk—all in a quest to raise your faith, power and (whatever blue is) ratings to get points but which are also prerequisites to be able to use the actions. The major actions each reward you with a certain rating while they require a different one. For each rating combination there is a different type of major action. You cannot do it all and the rewards get better the more you invest into one or two things. But you really need three to get going… so maybe you can fake the third by getting short-lived bonuses from your eponymous paladins (a card you choose from your deck every round).
Lots of the same tropes as the other West Kingdom games: debt deeds and crime paying off (or not). This time there is an inquisition punishing those who use criminals.
In the first 2 rounds, you have maybe 6 workers and no money, no provisions and all the good actions require 3 of your workers. The board seems daunting but by round 6 or 7 you manage to wrangle a lot more actions and workers out of it, scraping by with one more worker from a card here, converting a criminal (joker color) into 3 laborers (who are only useful for the most basic of spots) with the King’s Favor…
It’s quite fun and I’d love to play multiplayer because the bot at best gets in my way taking cards from the different markets or blocking spots for my camps & monks but it isn’t really competing while requiring a whole lot of remembering how it performs each action.
I cannot truly post a score on this—though by my count I won by a lot—because I know I made a bunch of mistakes. I wish this was a solo like Nusfjord where I just have to fight my own plans. The game itself is already such a huge puzzle and the bot takes me away from my own board too much.
PS: City of Crowns adds yet another “rating” to the point salad and 2 fun new actions with 2 new card types: Negotiate and Muster. Those make the game easier because they allow you to circumvent the strict requirements for the other actions sometimes. I played Negotiate on every turn and 3 times in the last turn alone (having to “pray” the worker spot free twice)
Tackled the second chapter of The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game , had one interruption, then won. Some confusion about how and when you move the ship along, not sure if we did that correctly.
The Key:Sabotage at Lucky Llama Land , first play. First game went badly (for me), just couldn’t put anything together. Sometimes you just need one vital bit of information and it falls into place, but it wasn’t happening for me. Won the next two games of it though, that felt good. It’s cool that each game in this series has a new bit you haven’t seen, but mostly they are the same, using the same icons and everything. This game is rated as one out of three, you are only generating a three digit code (Murder at the Oakdale Club is rated two out of three, and requires a four digit code).
Brass: Birmingham , had this game for so long, finally sat down to learn it. Rodney does a good video on it too, and we watched a bit of that on the day. In a round, each player gets two actions. Actions are build, sell, take out a loan, scout (get wild cards), develop, and network (place a link between two cities). Build is the most involved action. To build, you need a card with a location, or an industry card. You have to take your lowest building tile of an industry first. Some buildings give you coal, iron, or beer, which can then be used by yourself or anyone else. You want your coal/iron to be used up, because then that tile flips, giving you points, and increasing your income level. For other tiles, you flip by using a sell action. There are two eras to go through – canal and rail. In the canal era, you can only build boat links between locations. In the rail era you get to build rail links.
It’s slow going at first, your income starts at zero, so you’ll find yourself having to take out a loan or two to get started. We ended up only playing the first (canal) era, it was just taking too long. One player didn’t seem to like it, and I can’t say it was very exciting for me. One player seemed to be doing quite well ,although he was annoyed when I managed to sell a tile using mostly his connections (it was unintentional). We might have another crack at it next week, before we forget how to play. Really didn’t grab me.
The Key: Theft at Cliffrock Villa first play. This is actually the first in the series, and, like Lucky Llama Land, it’s rated as one out of three. Did pretty badly. I was very confused by a certain card type, which shows a blurred picture. I thought it was a picture of a persons backpack, but, after cough checking the rulebook (and checking Rodneys how to play), it turns out its a character portrait, with one very small detail shown not blurred. I think I got one out of ten correct, very hard to make it out. Why did I keep taking those cards? Ummmm, not sure. The other two players didn’t take any and seemed to work it out ok. I did a bit better in the second game, got the solution, but waaaaaay too many cards used. And in the third game, didn’t figure it out at all, and had so many cards (even more than for game two). Those blurred id cards were killing me, but, without them, couldn’t make any connections. Still fun, but a bit frustrating. My ranking for the three games would be Oakdale, Llama land, Cliffrock.
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
Fantasy Realms , X 2. No high scores, won the second game (just!)
Best gaming in ages. My partner actually suggested to me that we play some Hive and Hansa Teutonica, and we then played two games of the former and one of the latter, and I lost all three games! I couldn’t be any happier about this sequence of events : )
I thought the first Hive game was going my way, but suddenly found myself trapped late in the piece. The second game didn’t last nearly as long before I again found myself with no way out. We then had a very close game of HT with extremely different strategies but an end score difference of only two points (neither of us knew who had won until the very final piece of scoring!).
The D&D game I ran finished early (it was just a one-shot and two players couldn’t make it), so we played a few games of my newly purchased Infinity Gauntlet.
We only played two-player, but it was still pretty good. Different enough from Love Letter to justify owning both. And it’s quicker as it’s just 1 vs many, meaning no player elimination and no waiting for someone to get enough wins to end the game.
Does anyone have any Mottainai teaching tips? I know we have a few fans among us and I will be teaching my partner this afternoon. I think I’ve got a decent grip on how to present the rules, but I’m hoping for a few fundamental tips for play that might us through the learning process.
I’m a little wary of a rough first impression here because it feels like the kind of game we’ll dive into hard, but the overt take-that nature of several cards has me concerned. This isn’t usually a problem for us, but they can sour an experience fast if you get spanked when nobody knows what they’re doing.
Any tips on how to keep it from getting too salty for the first few games would be appreciated, with apologies for the short notice!
