Note to self: Chronicles of Crime: Noooooooo. Nope. Nuh uh.
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They are totally optional. You can turn it off and use the phone with or without positional data (ie: looking around as if your phone is a visor).
I will say the 3D elements are done really, really well. Very immersive. But the glasses aren’t designed for my phone (the place they sit hits one of the volume buttons), so I have to put them on loosely, and therefore they shift, and the moment they shift it goes really wonky. It’s a shame, really.
I may pick up one of those cardboard phone-holder-things. Because, as mentioned, the 3D is done really well.
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Yes.
The first choices you make can be broadly equally logical but arbitrarily damaging in the long run.
Two more training games of Mind MGMT tonight. I brought up the suggestion of the app but my wife said that she had really enjoyed the previous session so we just did 1v1with switching sides again. Agents won both times (although it was close on my go because I made some assumptions I shouldn’t have). We are definitely ready to graduate to the full game, where the edge may tip more towards the Recruiter. But we’ll see! I’ll be playing the Agents - I think it’ll be a lot of fun to have the features play a bigger role.
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I’m gonna use this as motivation to get our sessions rolling again. We got stuck on a few new games recently but it’s time to kick off the training wheels.
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Last few days have seen myself and one other start to repel the Hapsburg Monarchy from invading Spirit Island. Only played against levels 1&2 so far. They seem a fun adversary overall, not as brutal as the British ones but definitely thinky and change up plenty about the game. Of note to me has more been using the aspects for the base game low complexity spirits. Used one aspect with each of the 4 so far between us. They do quite a good job changing up what the spirit does and how you think about it. All the complexity increase is real so worthwhile I’d say for the more experienced Spirit Islander.
Also met @lalunaverde and played another excellent game of Terra Mystica. Finaihed just in last and felt I through it away turn 4 with some sloppy sequencing and overreaching for something that wasn’t too valuable.
Lastly we tried out Codex Naturalis which was a reasonably enjoyable spatial little card game. A touch arbitrary but fun for rounding the evening off.
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I’ve been muddling my way through a game of Feudum using The Queen’s Army this morning, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how much I’ve retained from my playthrough last year. Things have been moving smoothly, even with the new-to-me solo rules included, though I had been forgetting to remove epoch tiles and feed my pawns each round rather than each epoch change. This means that 90 minutes in, I’m just now moving onto the second epoch. 
I’ve also basically been losing since round three, so dragging things out has really only served to extend my beating. This “AI” is crushingly hard and I think it would be enough of a challenge for an experienced Feudum player, but taking on the dread queen while also trying to learn to play effectively is brutal. With that said, the system presented is dynamic (and flexible) yet has elements of predictability, so I can see this turning into a worthy pursuit for dedicated solo players.
Despite the slow rake over the coals, I’m really enjoying myself and definitely plan to keep at this for a while. Feudum is a difficult game and a real bear at times, but it’s so endlessly fascinating that I’m happy to have an alternative method of experiencing it.
Game state at dawn of epoch II
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Things like this is why I really need to get my garage cleaned out: so I can uncover our old dining room table and be able to set up longer games out there and play them as we can, without needing to worry about packing them away because the kids would destroy them.
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Well I finished up this morning (both sessions have been in the wee early hours), so I only took up our dining room table for a “working” day. Other games have definitely monopolized space for longer, although few are so thorough about it.
This was an amazing solo experience. I lost badly enough to get beheaded, but the extra time from my early flubs with the epoch tiles meant more time to see how the Queen works. The mechanism by which she operates is simple, but highly bespoke; it takes the best elements of an action deck (quick, dynamic) and a flowchart (comprehensive, “smart”) by using 5 distinct action decks which are drawn from in sequence, mimicking the normal game’s central mechanism. Once a few peculiarities with her actions (which also mirror the player’s) are internalized, the game flows naturally.
Oh, did I mention she cheats? She gets unlimited resources, auto-wins battles where she has a knight, has all the travel goodies (but still won’t hesitate to steal yours), two extra super-pawns, needs not feed her people and auto-completes her Royal Writs.
Anyway, it’s a big game so there’s always a LOT to talk about after a session, but I’ll leave it at that. I’m delighted that this has proven an enjoyable way to experience the game and will be giving it another shot soon (assuming my partner doesn’t want in). I plan to host—and teach!—a game in the near future, so as a side perk I’ll have a more comprehensive understanding of the rules and their circular nature.
Here’s a shot of the end state. One more round would have made a huge impact on the final scores.
[EDIT] I wanted to add that I made my final error in the last round. I had been operating on the idea that the game ended when two epoch tiles stacks were empty, but in fact it’s only one. I ended the game correctly, but not until after I had made choices assuming at least one more round. A mistake that only impacted me here, but would have been something of a fiasco if I was with a table of invested players.
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We had a game of Llamaland with friends who came over to eat the waffles I made and pick up 2 trees of my Christmas Tree forest. This was my first multiplayer and it went nicely. Took a bit longer than it should have because the kid playing with us was distracted by her brother playing on the PS5 and her mom exhibiting small amounts of AP—to win the game.
I think it is one of those games that is just thinky enough as a puzzle to make for an interesting turn. It is not the type of game I will play often enough to get really good at because the puzzle is not that compelling. But it is taught quickly enough, is accessible and has a neutral theme. Just the right thing to play with a family on a Saturday afternoon when one of the kids asks if we can play a game “because games are what’s special here” (I think her brother would say it is the PS5 though)
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Had a wonderful birthday game day with a ton of people. At one point we had 3 separate games going on!
Played Codenames, Letter Jam, and Sleuth, but the highlight for me was definitely a five-player game of Nusfjord, which was so funny. A bunch of people had issued shares and clearly everyone wanted to buy the lot, but whenever someone would get just enough gold, someone else would go “Well I have to issue another share” and drive up the price even more. Also my friend kept wanting to use his elders, but there wouldn’t be any fish on the banquet table. So he would use his turn to serve a lot of fish… only for everyone else to use their elders and for him to be out of luck when it got back to him.
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Gaming roundup for this week:
Concordia, got this to the table with some buddies this week, we played with salt and the Forum on the Hispania map. Was a great game, the two of us in the lead were neck and neck till he pulled ahead at the last minute by nabbing the Concordia card. I’m not sold on the Forum cards - they’re interesting sure, but felt a little unnecessary as an addition… Eh the others said they thought they were great, so maybe it’s just me.
Three Sisters, my copy of this arrived fresh from Kickstarter this week, and have got it to the table twice - once solo and once with a friend. The first game I was a little unclear on how some aspects of it were meant to work. Can’t say I was thrilled with the rulebook either, there’s some important rules buried in paragraphs of text. Maybe it would’ve clicked faster if I’d played Fleet:the Dice Game (but I’m still trying to track down a copy of that one…) But by game two, it all came together. Combo-tastic is an understatement with this game! I went heavy into goods and perrenials, which paid off with a decent lead at the end. Lots of fun, a bit easier to get to the table than Hadrian’s Wall, but still super fun and satisfying. I might like Hadrian more atm but they’re both great.
Metro X, taught this one to my wife when she was laid up with back troubles as a game that she could play without moving. Was fun - she really enjoyed it and gave me a good run for my money. Some good points on transfers gave me the win, but I suspect our next game will be super tight!
Love Letter, a couple of games of the new 2019 version of this classic. I like the improvements to the production in this version, and the Chancellor is fun but I’m not sold on the Spy cards with 2 players. Seems like it injects some more luck into a game that was already lucky. I get that they’re mostly there for games with larger playcounts though, and suspect they’d work better with more than two players.
Schotten Totten, got to break out this one for the first time with a mate. Lots of fun, I think we played 4 games back to back. Still haven’t tried the tactics cards, but the game as it is I find super engaging.
Fantasy Realms, couple of games of this new addition to the collection. It’s fun, if a little hard to tell how players are doing during the game (at least for novices like us). I suspect repeat plays with the same group will make it easier to tell how you’re going before things are over. The scoring is a pain but there’s more than one app for that to make it a little easier. I think in future I’ll make sure people offer a description of their fantasy realm at the end, to inject that little bit more flavor.
Azul, after round one I felt I was doing pretty well, which is unusual for me. But clearly my mid and late game efforts were lackluster as I ended up with a score like half of my opponents. I obviously don’t get how to play this game, but others like it so it remains in the collection.
Nut, couple of games of this one – they were both tight and tense, but I was particularly pleased with the network I built around a couple of wilds early on in one game, which gave me the win.
Roll Player, lost this one off the back of just not getting enough dice of my colour 
I did decently despite that but, my opponent managed all his background goals (I was one short) so partially outplayed, partially annoyed at my bad luck.
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Had our usual gaming couple, we will call them J and C, over for a small birthday party for our younger kiddo. Since it was also J’s birthday soon, we went ahead and let him pick what game we played, so we had a game of Lords of Waterdeep, 5 players when my wife’s brother, K, joined in. We also included the Skullport expansion, which adds the Corruption mechanic.
We don’t play this with a full crew very often, and even less so with Corruption, so it felt pretty different than usual, and that mixed with being sore and tired really threw off my wife’s game, who is usually near the top of the scoring, but came last in this game. Though to be fair to her, once she realized she would not win, she started having fun accruing Corruption and trying out some new strategies.
J and I were vying for first, when K made a couple of big plays to jump into the lead. Things went back and forth from there, and the other two players started catching up, but by the end of the game, K managed to pull ahead and be the only player to pass 100 points, getting 102. C came in second with 95, her husband J just behind at 93. I had 86, and my wife, with all her Corruption, got knocked back to 52.
Then later that night, I soloed a couple of games of The Bloody Inn. I did not do too great on either game, scoring 144 in the first and only 130 in the second. In the second game I had made a pretty decent engine, with two room service tokens getting me 4 points on average at the beginning of each turn, but I got kinda screwed by a large quantity of police in the deck. Near the end I had two high value corpses, but needed to launder money to make room on the income track, but police kept coming to the Inn, forcing me to keep Bribing them, which then cost me income at the end of the turn. Was finally able to launder, and then was able to bury both corpses on the very last turn, so at least I did not lose the game. Still, would have done much better if the police presence had been less.
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I have a couple of games to report. We had my b’day party on Saturday, and even though we did not play a game (it was soooo hot inside the house) we definitely are thinking of having a fortnightly night of games between 4 of us. Architects did impress them.
So I had a solo game on hard mode Sunday night again. The bot this time trounced me 50 something to 38 ( I stopped adding when it was an obvious that I had no hope).
Yesterday I went back to or Game Guild Night, that had been cancelled due to COVID restrictions for what it felt like ages. They had re-started (with vaccination passes being checked) on last Monday, but I could not go. It felt so great to see the tables full of games again. I played Unfathomable, and it did impress me very positively. I think so far is my favourite hidden traitor game. I was the traitor, but with a cultist, not a hybrid, so I had to wait for the boat to reach 12 travel points, and then make the boat fail.
So to that level of difficulty for the traitor (later we realised that the owner should have just kept hybrids on the cards as per our game count) I was not too bad. I was considering revealing that I was the traitor as soon as we hit 12, but not knowing which are the advantages was tricky. My character was the Magic Tome keeper, which did help, but the last 3 mythos cards I fell short to jeopardize. Our lower counter was at three ( I think we had two at that level) and the boat was a bit damaged, but there was not enough time for me to make it fail. So I did not succeed to bring the trip to an end, but neither did they have me in the brig or discover it was me, so a mixed defeat. Until the Deep Ones judge me for my failure, that is.
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Long one.
Feudum with a real human! The appeal of the game on the table last week proved irresistible for my partner and we sat down to our first game with the advanced rules, across two 90 minute sessions.
The first epoch lasted five rounds, but then we had a change every round thereafter so the tempo was brisk. We stuck to the centre of the map for the first half of the game which meant we were getting frisky from the first round, jockeying for rulership and rushing to place subjects. We put out Feudums early too, accepting the military burdens of becoming vassals.
While things looked grim on the map, in the guilds things were a little more relaxed. Too relaxed. We were each enjoying uncontested guild master statuses in our respective guilds, so with little reason to compete for ownership, the war was fought on the shelves. My partner was constantly bombarding my farmer with harvests and rosaries, ensuring the market was always stocked and making my pushes impossible. She was neglecting her knight duties perfectly, meanwhile, sniping all the royal seals for herself and ensuring none moved back in for me. Thankfully I had a good farm network for efficient harvests, so made good use of rosaries for my seals.
Pretty soon it became clear that neither of us could sustain our combat obligations without suffering for it. Our pawns weren’t starving yet but they were constantly drunk and with both of us ranked equally for disloyalty, we backed off. The rest of the game never got more heated than some more influence jockeying—which my partner used to great effect on her final turn!—but it was where we did most of our diversifying. My partner used her airship and Behemoth to expand deep into the badlands and mountains, all the while fulfilling her secret Royal Writ. I doubled down on Feudums and took the opportunity to take over the Knight’s guild, landing me my 5th active guild, with me as guild master in four. I also tended a few lucrative landscape tiles.
In the end, she was able to outperform me in most of the final scoring categories, and picked up a juicy 9 points from her writ, but lost a few easy guild points during the mid-game scoring checks (rookie mistake stuff) which definitely would have been enough to swing the victory over to her.
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I’ve recently been so tired in the evenings that I have been playing solo games in the mornings. My current rotation includes Calico, Sagani and Sprawlopolis. This morning I almost “lost” Sagani–the solo challenge says to reach 75 points within placing 25 tiles–it took me 24 tiles today and I had to take a bunch of red minus points along the way… because I overreached and got unlucky with tons of 10 point tiles coming up and too few white tiles…
On a slightly different note: I have recently crossed 50 plays in Hardback 
We included the Literary Awards again for the last 3 games or so but I think we’ll go without again from next game–both of us enjoy the deckbuilding more without the possibility of 15 points from the literary awards deciding victory. Although now that we have played so much the games do not last long enough for anyone to really go for the 12 letter words. But the long words detract from the game we both find no matter which one of us is winning.
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First play of my copy of The Great Zimbabwe! Very nice.[/borat]
Played 1870: Railroading Across the Trans Mississippi with @EnterTheWyvern . Interesting premise where your founding companies will be full capitalise at 100%, but any unbought shares will continue to give money to the company. Meaning that the best way to damage your opponents is to cross-invest on their companies, depriving theirs of long term funds.
The map is large, but chokepoints exists everywhere. The Mississippi River acting as a barrier on accessing other parts of the map is interesting too, as the player who owns the bridge company WILL literally gatekeep in this game.
However, I feel like the train deck is a bit too thick, making it more difficult (therefore, slow) to plow through it. But that’s based on 1 play at 3 players.
Very intriguing and I want to play more of it
Codex Naturalis - it’s very pretty and enjoyable too
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Green with envy!
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So Yellow and Yangtze was awesome. 1 hour for a 3 player game. I caused mayhem everywhere just to see how things shook out.
My wife won (obvs) 16-13-13. Still not sure of a lot of strategy but I’m buzzing
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The girls were after me all day for a game of Cluedo. So I obliged. Won it in 20-25 mins. At least they had fun.
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